Sarkis Zabunyan

Sarkis Zabunyan, known as Sarkis, was born in Istanbul in 1938. He is a Turkish-born Armenian conceptual artist living in France. His family moved from Sivas to Istanbul. Sarkis studied at the St. Michel French High School and got his degree from Mimar Sinan University. He decided to use his Christian name Sarkis in his professional artistic life, and moved to Paris in 1962 after winning the Paris Young Artists? Biennial Prize. One of the leading conceptual artists, Sarkis has returned to his native Turkey many times since the 1980s to exhibit his work. He has participated in the Istanbul Biennial. Since the 1970′s, Sarkis has used installation, photography, watercolor and video to bring together the legacies of art and cinema with the intellectual traditions of East and West. His art explores issues of presence and absence, place and identity, permanence and transience. Drawing on the mystical traditions of the East, he is particularly interested in the relationship between time and memory, and emphasizes the temporary nature of matter and experience. He was the curator of the last ever Fureya Koral exhibition when ceramic artist Koral was still alive. As a professor at Strasbourg Beaux Arts, Sarkis has trained young Turkish artists including Su Yücel and Serhat Kiraz. Sarkis′s exhibition, A Milestone, was curated by Ali Akay, (May 2005) at the Akbank Art Gallery in Istanbul. The gallery devoted all of its six floors to the Sarkis. Apart from Turkey and France, Sarkis has exhibited his work in over three dozen countries, including the USA, Germany, India, Australia, China, Japan, Mexico and Brazil. Sarkis′s motto is "Anılarım Vatanımdır" (My Memories are My Country).