Hrair sarkissian biography template
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Adopting this method, in Stolen Past, 3D-printed lithophane panels are installed within tombstone-like plinths, illuminated so that the artifacts reappear in ethereal black-and-white photographs. Sarkissian sits on the Advisory Board of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut.
- Selected exhibitions
- 2024
- Solo exhibitions, The Presence of Absence, Fotografisk Center (Copenhagen, Denmark)
- 2021–23
- Solo exhibitions, The Other Side of Silence, Bonnefanten Museum (Maastricht, The Netherlands)/Bonniers Konsthall (Stockholm, Sweden)/Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE)
- 2021
- The British Art Show 9 (UK)
- 2020
- Solo exhibitions, FOCUS: Hrair Sarkissian, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (USA)
- 2015
- 56th Venice Biennale (awarded the Golden Lion), Armenian Pavilion (Italy)
- “Execution Squares” 2008
- Colloction of Tate Modern.
Hrair Sarkissian
Hrair Sarkissian is a photographer.
These backdrops, absent of their sitters, become symbols of lost traditions, cultural identity and time, while commemorating to a certain period within a society.
Artist Biography
Hrair Sarkissian’s (b. Large-scale, backlit and hung unframed, like the backdrops themselves, these photographs both monumentalise and eulogise their subject.
In 2010 he completed a BFA in Photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. These serene, luminous images simultaneously evoke the scars of destruction and the resilience of local communities to rebuild, urging us to reflect on our collective responsibility to protect and preserve culture.
Venue
Aichi Arts Center 10F
Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art
Profile
- Born 1973 in Damascus, Syria.
The exhibition brought together two major new commissions and more than a dozen of his most significant bodies of work from the preceding 15 years.
Download CV
Hrair Sarkissian started his career at his father’s photographic studio in Damascus. Mankind’s intervention is, although invisible, tangible through the buildings undergoing construction or the ruined cityscapes, remnants of conflict.
Sarkissian earned his foundational training at his father’s photographic studio in Damascus, and completed a BFA in Photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (2010).
The architecture and surroundings of the execution squares are no more than a backdrop when you see the bodies hanging in your mind; the faces upon which the zebiba is imprinted are no longer individuals; the still darkness of the libraries becomes loaded once you realize what historical complexities these archives cover.”
Biography
Syria 1973.
I try to engage the viewer into a more profound reading of what lies behind the surface of the image, thereby re-evaluating larger historical or social narratives. His work has been widely exhibited, including at the Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth (2020); Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM), Valencia (2019); 14th Sharjah Art Biennial (2019); The Davies Museum, Massachusetts (2017); Sursock Museum, Beirut (2017); Kadist, San Francisco (2017); Imperial War Museum, London (2017); BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle (2017); Kulturcentrum Ronneby, Sweden (2016); 10th Bamako Encounters, Mali (2015); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015); the Golden Lion-winning Armenian pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2015); Mosaic Rooms, London (2015); Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany (2014); Tate Modern, London (2014); The New Museum, New York (2014); and Darat al Funun, Amman (2011).
Exhibition
- Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2025
- Hrair Sarkissian, Stolen Past, 2025
- ©︎ Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee
- Photo: ToLoLo studio
Description
Stolen Past
Damascus-born artist Hrair Sarkissian works across various media, including photography, video, sculpture, and sound.
The invisibility versus visibility is evident in his often deserted landscapes and locations, devoid of human presence yet filled with human existence. Employing traditional documentary techniques and using a 4×5 analogue camera, my photographic series consist of austere, large-scale images.
The constancy and beauty of the settings, however, are at odds with the socio-historical realities that they conceal.
Without the distraction of a sitter in the foreground, our focus shifts to the backdrop itself and to the tools and spaces historically used for studio portraiture. Once people become aware of the invisible elements behind my work, the physicality of the image is almost destroyed.
Work Description
Background marks the disappearance of a tradition of studio portraiture integral to the history and development of Middle Eastern photography in the twentieth century by documenting one of its central artefacts: the studio backdrop.
He lives and works in London since 2011.
“I use photography as a way to tell stories that are not immediately visible on the surface. He is considered one of the leading conceptual photographers of his generation.
His work explores how memory, history, and violence are inscribed in communities, and how absence can be made visible.
Stolen Past sheds light on the tragic history of the Raqqa Museum in northern Syria. Spanning photography, moving image, sculpture, sound and installation, Sarkissian’s practice creates meditative dreamscapes in some moments; deathscapes in others—sites where the muted voice, absent from the frame, is temporarily offered space to breathe.
Sarkissian is on the Advisory Board of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut.
Lives in London.
Hrair Sarkissian earned his foundational training at his father’s photographic studio in Damascus.