Unearthing a negotiated absence

An avatar drifts through the site where the Treaty of Lausanne was signed in 1923, in a digital reconstruction of the Aula of the Palais de Rumine. This treaty marked the end of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of modern Turkey. It reshaped the Middle East, securing Western interests through new economic and strategic alignments. Absent from the negotiating table, the Armenian and Kurdish peoples were denied both voice and recognition. Their national claims were silenced— officially erased, diplomatically ignored. The treaty inscribed their exclusion into history, assigning them to a long silence. Louis Rivier’s allegorical murals, once passive decor, begin to speak. They call us to notice what was unseen yet remains etched into the architecture. Wandering through these forgotten spaces, we confront the emotional charge of a place where history was not only written, but withheld— still present, still resonant.