Ruby Vartan
The artist is present in the art. Painting as Presence
Ruby Vartan is a painter and performance artist based in Los Angeles.
Using her body as both subject and instrument, she traces and imprints her physical form directly onto the canvas, embedding her presence within the work itself.
Process
Her practice merges painting and performance through gestures of painting, tearing, and sewing the canvas, exploring themes of resilience, healing, and the freedom of embodied expression. Working across mixed media—including oil, acrylic, charcoal, and pigment applied through bodily movement— Ruby creates layered figurative abstractions rooted in the feminine form.
BIOGRAPHY
Ruby Vartan is a Los Angeles–based painter and performance artist whose practice explores presence, embodiment, and the expressive power of the female body. Working at the intersection of painting and performance, she uses her own body as both canvas and instrument, transforming the act of painting into a physical and immersive process.
Through gesture, imprint, and movement, Ruby records the body’s presence directly onto the surface. Layers of paint, torn canvases, and sewn fragments emerge throughout her work, reflecting cycles of rupture, resilience, and repair. Her process is deeply physical—an act in which the body leaves traces of lived experience, memory, and transformation.
In dialogue with artists who expanded the role of the body in art, such as Ana Mendieta and Yves Klein, Ruby approaches painting as an embodied act in which presence becomes inseparable from the work itself.
Born to an Armenian family with roots in Armenia and Lebanon and now based in Los Angeles, Ruby’s work is shaped by a personal history of migration, cultural memory, and resilience. The body in her work becomes both witness and agent—carrying marks of vulnerability while asserting strength, freedom, and renewal.
For Ruby, painting is inseparable from being. Each work stands as a physical trace of existence—an affirmation of breath, movement, and the enduring power of the human spirit.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
Performance Art
2025| Hope Performance, Cannibal Flower
2025| 2025|Peace Performance, Artshare LA
2025| Digital Flux, Orlando FL
2024| “Presence”, Shoebox Arts LA
2024| Female Art Night, Sab Gallery, DTLA
2024| “Traces” Echo Park Art
Solos
2025| Featured Artist, Hive Gallery & Studios, DTLA
2024| Presence, Shoebox Arts LA
2023| Rise, Glenmark hotel, Glendale
Selected Group Shows
2025| Drawing from Imperfectionism, Wönzimer
2025| LA Originales, Superchief Gallery
2025| Dorado 806 Projects, Santa Monica
2025| Embracing Diasporic Art, Reflect Space, Glendale
2025| Cancer Support Group show, Baldwin Art Gallery
2024| The Middle Becomes Eclectic, The Middle Room
2024| Not an Art Fair, Shockboxx Gallery
2024| Apophenia, Open call, LAMAG
2023| Brand 51, Brand Gallery Art Center
2023| Juried art exhibition, MOAH:CEDAR, Lancaster
2022| Art is in Bloom, LA Artcore
2022| Portraits of JAQ, Armenian Museum of America, Boston
2022| Make Plain, Gallery 825
2019| Beyond Redemption, Launch LA
2019| Collector’s Choice Awards, Studio Channel Islands, Camarillo
2018| Museum of Modern Art, Yerevan, Armenia
2012| ACA Gallery | New York
2010| ‘Art in fall’ - Hovnanian School | New Jersey, NJ
2004| Palais de Congrès Emil Lahoud | Beirut
2003| University of ALBA | Beirut
2000| Kulturzentrum | Beirut
Awards
2023| Glendale Arts Association, the Makery of LA (first in show)
2019| The Next Thing, Blackboard Gallery, Camarillo