Seta Manoukian
Life Delights
2016 -
Acrylic paint on canvas
127 x 66 cm.
Seta Manoukian was ordained Buddhist nun under the name of Ani Pema Drolma two decades ago. Her spiritual quest led her in the esoteric Mantrayana Tibetan Buddhist path, which is a secret path. “When you join Buddhism, you make a vow not to reveal everything”, says the artist, clarifying that every individual has to discover the truth at one’s own pace. “Layer by layer like pealing an onion, I will try to give a hint”, she promises.
Life Delights is deeply anchored in this vision. It is articulated on a vertical line that acts for our center, with two rocks, one at the bottom and one at the top. The rock at the bottom is heavy and relates to a perception of the world as being painful, full of suffering while the upper one expresses calm and fulfillment.
The artist explains that “our mind is all the time buzzing with ideas coming and going like crazy. Here is an invitation to sit and meditate. With meditation, we don’t analyze anymore and we become masters of our minds. We detach ourselves from attachment to things and people, which makes us suffer, so that things become clear and pure.” For this reason, the upper rock is full of colors. “When we become calm and joyful, we are like children and the colors we appreciate are the colors that children are sensitive to. Children are pure, they love without conditions”, concludes Manoukian.
Life Delights was reproduced in Seta Manoukian. Painting in Levitation, published in 2019 by Kaph Books and Saradar Collection, as an example of her work of the 2010s where she revisits metaphysical issues in the posterity of her process in the late 1980s – the vertical / horizontal series – and the 1990s that involved fluids. It was displayed in Dew Drops at Marfa’ Projects, the first solo exhibition in Beirut after a 20-year hiatus.
Reference SM-P-2016-A
About the artist
Born in Beirut, Lebanon 1945
Works and Lives in Los Angeles, U.S.A
Born into an Armenian family artist Seta Manoukian grew up in Beirut, Lebanon.
Taught by Paul Guiragossian, she began to draw at an early age. She won the first prize in an art competition organized by the Italian Embassy at the age of seventeen and was sent to Perugia, Italy, for three months to study art. When Seta finished her studies, her father enrolled her into the Academy of Belle Arte in Rome. She returned to Beirut in the seventies, after four years in Rome.
During this period, Manoukian surrounded by artists, writers and journalists, started becoming aware of the grave political problems that her country was facing.
When the war began in 1975, Manoukian was teaching at the Lebanese University. She began volunteering in poor neighborhoods to teach children how to draw and paint. The children’s paintings and drawings were made into two books “War Through the Eyes of Lebanese Children” Published in 1977, and “Taches Rouge Et Blue.”
After 10 years in Lebanon, with the fear of being kidnapped, Manoukian travelled to LA and joined the Sherry Frumkin Gallery in Santa Monica. Still shaken by the war, Manoukian’s work revolved around themes of displacement and the madness of war. She later transitioned into more organic shapes inspired by her increasing spirituality.
In 2000, she traveled to Sri-Lanka to study Buddhist philosophy and meditation and decided to stay and further delve into Dharma, the teachings of Buddha.
Manoukian has since become a Buddhist nun known as Ani Pema Drolma and resides Ari Bhod in Tehachapi, a retreat in California.
Other works by this artist
