DEAR VISITOR,

Tragedy and BRAIN Lessons of My Lai tries to unnerve you by depicting grotesque human acts which were much worse than my images on canvas. – ALEN J SALERIAN MD

9459 Dung Tran’s brain, Salerian AJ oil painting

America’s awakening to the savageness of the Vietnam War was triggered by grotesque images of dead women and children in the My Lai  massacre in 1968.

My paintings are inspired by a few surviving photos of the massacre, captured by Nick Ut and Ronald L Haeberle, who  destroyed the great majority of images of savagery by Charlie’s company under the command of Officer Calley.

The killing of my great uncle Rupen Sevag, a poet, a physician, and a passionate voice of democracy, in the 1915 cerebro-genocide of thought leaders preceding the genocide of 1 1/2 million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915, sensitized me to the violent organized death of JFK for trying to prevent the tragic Vietnam war. Both massacres occurred in violation of the governing laws of Ottoman Turkey and America .

People of diverse heritage in both countries were represented by a democratic parliamentary system in 1915 and 1968, when savagery temporarily ruled at the expense of the governing laws and order.

We can win the most medals in Olympics, explore space, and defend democracy around the world, yet at times we also launch disastrous wars and commit crimes against humanity.

My paintings are graphic descriptions of savagery. They contain unedited visceral emotions, and are not for children or people who prefer to avoid our  human failures.

Alen J Salerian M.D.

Click here to see the paintings – Tragedy and BRAIN Lessons of My Lai