Though he was born in France, Alexis Pazoumian has long had ties with Russia. His grandfather, the painter Richard Jeranian, is originally from Armenia, and was among the first Western artists of his generation to go to Moscow in 1957, and then again in 1970, and then again for an exhibition in Novosibirsk in Siberia. “I grew up listening to the stories of his travels to this strange and far-away land,” says Pazoumian, “and it made me want to go there.”
Pazoumian’s uncle also adopted an Armenian girl after she was orphaned in the 1988 earthquake; this girl now lives in Yakutsk in the far north of Russia, so when Pazoumian heard about them, he decided he’d like to go to visit. “I was very well-received by this family,” he says. “They helped me throughout my stay.”