Spandaramet, Goddess of the Underworld
Watercolour on Paper, 45 x 60 inches, 2025.
Death is not an end but a return—to earth, to memory, to silence. Spandaramet is the stillness that speaks of everything we’ve lost and carry.
This piece is part of an ongoing series in which I reimagine pre-Christian Armenian goddesses through a contemporary lens. These mythic figures—once erased by Armenia’s early adoption of Christianity—are reclaimed here as powerful archetypes of womanhood, resilience, and transformation. You can explore the other goddesses in the series, Anahid, Anoush and, Nané.
Often misread as a goddess of darkness or punishment, Spandaramet is instead the keeper of the dead and also associated with fertile lands. This juxtaposition highlights the message of the eternal. She was considered the actual earth. I imagined her dissolving into the land, her body becoming the ground and roots. The vines create the Armenian symbol of eternity. Watercolor at this scale requires surrender—it bleeds, shifts, and stains—and that unpredictability became part of how I painted grief and transformation into her form.
She is not death as absence. She is the ground we come from, and to which we return.
