Sarkis, 1938

Istanbul-born artist Sarkis Zabunyan, better known by his professional name “Sarkis”, studied interior architecture at Mimar Sinan University. In 1964 he moved to Paris. Sarkis was awarded the French Ministry of Culture and Information’s Grand Prix National de Sculpture in 1991 and his works are on display at nearly 200 contemporary art museums in America, Europe, and Asia.

Sarkis produces in a wide range of disciplines including installation, photography, watercolor, and video. He is a versatile artist whose works are informed by such concepts as “memory” and “remembrance”. Exhibited during the Site exhibition at Istanbul Modern in September 2009, this 10-piece stained glass series, “The Stained Glasses of the Innocents”, depicts creatures from the film adaptation of the epic novel The Lord of the Rings. Author J.R.R. Tolkien drew inspiration for his masterpiece from 14th and 15th Century legends. The auras of these legendary creatures seem to endow them with ferocity and violence, even though they are imprisoned in stained glass and rendered docile: even invested with a frigid holiness. This image of a group of monsters is positioned between fiction and science fiction. As Sarkis states, the re-birth of these creatures as “today’s monsters”, reinterpreted through a contemporary visual lexicon, shapes historical legends. Sarkis’ work has always been characterized by drama, and for this work he set up artificial lighting in a darkened space, rather than allowing the stained glass to be illuminated by natural sunlight. By unfolding the magical, conceptual layers of the visual world, Sarkis shows that art is born out of the interaction between an artist’s knowledge of art history and his deep intuition.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Artists and Gallery Nathalie Obadia