Mardoyan's work is shaped by the nearly life-long challenge of communicating in different tongues, with disparate writing systems, syntaxes, and cultural meanings. The artist's work reflects the difficulty and poetic mystery of communication - about how layers of meaning are conceaeld and revealed, depending on the degree of one's knowledge. For more than ten years, Mardoyan has employed a pictorial vocabulary of hieroglyphic symbols that functions formally and as a vehicle for the expression of meaning. The artist deliberately avoids the obviously representational ones which are more universally recognized and understood, preferring instead the enigmatic and abstract images whose meanings are less accessible and therefore demand a primarily formal reading.
Mardoyan frequently employs a serial arrangement of identical parts such as grids, diptychs and triptychs. Meaning is derived from either the relationship of depicted symbols or from a shift in color. Just as often, however, she arranges the parts randomly, underscoring not only the formal significance of these pictorial symbols but the idea that even the arbitrary juxtaposition of words can resonate with poetic meaning.
