ABSTRACT
Williams’s entry reveals that the word “restoration,” like numerous other keywords of the Armenian diaspora, typically falls on the side of seeking an “original form,” rather than on the side of making anew. In this chapter, the author hopes to show how A Small Guide to the Invisible Seas, an artist’s book of collages by the Greek-Armenian artist Aikaterini Gegisian, provokes just such questions and guides us toward their answers. The prefix “re-” first made its way into English from Latin via French and Spanish in the thirteenth century, and its use expanded exponentially over subsequent centuries. The Latin re- originally meant “back” or “backwards,” while the English “re-” today generally signifies “again.” In the case of “restoration,” the “re-” seems to promise a return to a prelapsarian state: literally, a state of bountiful stores. Philomela mourned storation without seeking re-storation.
