Ruby Vartan
I am a Los Angeles - based painter and performance artist whose practice centers on the body as a living canvas, tool and vessel. Working across painting, drawing, body printing and performance, I bring my physical body directly into the making of my own work - tracing its contours, pressing it into paint, and using the body to leave evidence of presence on the surface.
My work explores body memory, resilience, female strength in beauty and the ways personal and generational experiences are held within the body and mind. As my practice always continues to evolve, I am deepening my research into layers and structures of skin and the breathing soul through oil painting. The skin becomes both a physical surface and a point of entry - a way of revealing what lies beneath. As I uncover new layers through material, color, and process, I also discover new layers within myself.
My dialogue with my body is deeply rooted in my lived experiences. After a complicated pregnancy and becoming a mother, I fled war with my infant twins and began a new life in Los Angeles. Experiences of displacement, emotional breaks, and survival have shaped my understanding of the. body's capacity to endure, adapt, and reclaim its rebirth.
Through direct contact between body, material, and surface, I create work that records presence while transforming vulnerability into a new becoming- luminous, alive and free.
Process
My process brings the body directly into the act of painting. Rooted in the tradition of classical oil painting, I work through layering, glazing, texture and the building of light and silhouette while incorporating my hands, skin, and body contour alongside traditional tools. The body becomes the initial point of departure, setting the work in motion. As the painting develops, the physical mark transforms through layers of paint and gesture, moving from the recognizable into the abstract presence, until the body dissolves into a new birth.
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
2026| Performance, Angel's Gate Cultural Center
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
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
2026| dear artists..., Band of Vices
2026| Gloria Delson's Contemporary Gallery
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