Published in 2024, Reparations of the Heart: Toward a SWANA Futurity by Kristin Anahit Cass is a book of essays, stories, poems, quotes and images.
In it, Cass poses the questions: What does the world look like from a SWANA (South West Asian and North African) futurist perspective? Can we envision a future of mutual support, and a flowering of our diverse and shared SWANA cultures, even in the shadow of turmoil caused by the lingering effects of imperialism on countries from Armenia to Afghanistan to Palestine to Syria?
Kristin Anahit Cass is an artist working in photography, video, writing, sculpture and other media. In addition to her arts education, Cass has worked with women and minority owned businesses, artists, and nonprofits in her career as a lawyer. She is one of the founders of the LGBTQ platform Entanik (Family) where she is active in supporting creatives in the global community. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions including Reparations of the Heart at the Stamelos Gallery Center at the University of Michigan, Witness: The Artist’s Response at Elephant Room Gallery in Chicago, Chicago Neighborhoods at the Hairpin Gallery in Chicago and SLAYSIAN 2.0 at Co-Prosperity in Chicago. Her Borderlands Under Fire project was a finalist for the 2018 Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize. Cass is a graduate of the University of Chicago.
Reparations of the Heart moves chronologically between past, present and future. In part one, Ancestors, Cass photographs members of SWANA diasporas living in their ancestral homelands, free of colonial violence. In part two, The Republic of My Imagination, she depicts members of diverse SWANA communities, including Armenians, Assyrians and Yezidis, building a multicultural home in an Anatolia unravaged by genocide. In part three, A Planet of Our Own, she uses elements of science fiction, including space travel and advanced technology, to envision a just future.
Lillian Avedian, The Armenian Weekly (April 10, 2024)
Kristin Anahit Cass on The Gaily Show (starts at 27:21)
As of this writing, the book is only available through its publisher Fifth Wheel Press.
