Sarkis Zabunyan

Sarkis Zabunyan — Biography

Sarkis, formally Sarkis Zabunyan, is one of the most internationally recognised artists to come out of Turkey and a leading figure in installation art. His work, which weaves together architecture, music and the visual arts, turns on memory, the traces left by war and the relationship between an art object and its space. It has been shown at the Louvre, the Guggenheim, MAXXI and the Centre Pompidou, and he has lived and worked in Paris since 1964.

After the Saint Michel French high school, Sarkis studied interior design at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul and began with painting, holding his first show there in 1960. Settled in Paris, he won the painting prize at the 1967 Biennale de Paris. He then moved from painting to sculpture and to sound and video installation, taking part in Harald Szeemann's When Attitudes Become Form in 1969 and in Documenta in 1977. A thread of memory runs through the work, from his childhood Istanbul and the Çaylak Sokak of his youth to the idea of Kriegsschatz, the war trophy; Days and Nights is among his best-known pieces. His 1986 show Çaylak Sokak was his most comprehensive in Turkey, and in 2011 MAMCO in Geneva staged the retrospective Hôtel Sarkis.

He is also a teacher: from 1980 to 1990 he directed the art department of the École des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg. He received France's Order of Arts and Letters and in 1991 the Grand Prix national de sculpture.