Contributor Bios

Anita Toutikian

www.toutikian.com

Anita Toutikian (b. 1961, Beirut). Under the pseudonym “Artist Unknown” Anita has created Lebanon’s very first expressions of alternative forms of post-war art in a disobedient approach. She first studied art with private tutors, then at studio Paul Guiragossian, Academie Michleange, Toros Roslin Acadmy, and at Haigazian University. Later she continued her studies perusing a PhD degree in clinical psychology at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, exploring the psychology and the multidimensional functions of art. Anita has participated in more than Eighty solo and collective exhibitions in Beirut, Tripoli, Yerevan, Paris, London, Amman, New York, Algiers, Toronto, Nicosia, Tunis, Washington and Los Angeles. She has received many honors among them the Sursock Museum Honors in 1997 and the Sursock Museum First Prize in 1998. She has taught at Haigazian University and Notre Dame University, and she is the author of many publications including a book titled “Counteractive Art from the Middle East.” Anita’s art is activism against mental oppression, which she thinks is the cause of all wars, suffering, manipulation and injustice. Her art interrupts routine patterns of thought in the minds of viewers, sensitizing them to induced beliefs, augmenting their capacity for perception and enhancing their sense of self-discovery.

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