Sarkis

This comprehensive monograph published in collaboration with Dirimart gathers works of contemporary artist Sarkisconceived and presented in the context of the one city he keeps returning to: Istanbul. His iconic installation aylak Sokak, first exhibited in 1986, is considered a turning point in the history of contemporary art in Turkey. Named after the street Sarkis grew up in, aylak Sokak recreates his family home featuring a bathtub and his fathers shoes bearing the German words for war spoils KRIEGS and SCHATZ. A reference to German cultural theorist Aby Warburgs concept of a Leidschatz as humanitys treasure of suffering, Kriegsschatz became a key concept in Sarkis oeuvre. Drawing on his own Turkish-Armenian identity, Sarkiss continunes his works presented at the Venice Biennale in 2015, the centennial of the Armenian genocide. His latest body of work Red Stained Glass traces the present through fragments from the past. Photographs from Istanbul are rendered in red, fractured and recombined to further explore themes such as time and memory, presence and absence, identity and exile.