Turkey at the 2015 Venice Biennale: Rainbows in Respiro
A Brief History of Turkey
Turkey was declared a Republic in 1923, after the Turkish War of Independence. The war effectively ended the Ottoman Empire, which had existed since 1299. The War of Independence occurred after a series of violent events in Turkey’s history, including WWI and the Armenian Genocide.Modern-day Turkey’s political history is particularly complex due to the Armenian Genocide, which the Turkish government refuses to recognize to this day.[1] During WWI, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed in the genocide, either by torture, execution, or exhaustion from deportation. The Turkish government asserts that the Armenian population was simply “relocated.”[2] The genocide also affected other minorities, including Assyrians and Greeks living in the Ottoman Empire.
Turkey remained neutral during WWII, until it sided with the Allied forced in 1945 and quickly became a charter member of the UN. After 1945, Turkey entered a period of disarray as it transformed from a single-party nation to a multiparty democracy. A series of coups and the Kurdish-Turkish dramatically complicated the country’s political environment, and still have not been completely resolved today. Turkey has been repeatedly charged with human rights violations, specifically the right to life and freedom from torture. The AKP (Justice and Development Party), a socially conservative political party, has been the cause of many of these violations, and is well known for cracking down on the press, even arresting journalists for terrorism, treason, and “insulting Islam” among other accusations. The human rights record of Turkey remains a major obstacle to a future membership of the EU.
Today, Turkey is officially a parliamentary representative democracy. The automotive industry makes up a significant part of the economy, and the major exports are textiles, petrochemical products, iron, steel, electronics and home appliances. Turkey has a temperate Mediterranean climate with hot summers and mild winters. The country is relatively mountainous, and the Eastern Turkey experiences severe winters with temperatures well below zero.
Venice 2015: Respiro
At the 2015 Biennale, Sarkis created an installation that consists of neon works, stained glass, and mirrors, all of which are placed in a simple brick-walled room. Although Sarkis emerged from a politically tumultuous nation, his work seeks to move beyond political and social questions. About his work, Sarkis stated:
I will be reaching out beyond geopolitics, to a more expansive context of a million plus years, going back to the creation of the universe and the beginning of time, back to the first-ever rainbow—the very first magical breaking point of light. Instead of binding ourselves to specific instances within the histories of politics, religion, philosophy and arts, we will embrace contemporaneity at the intersection of both the present and the distant past in our continued commitment to defy stagnation.[3]
Curated by DefneAyas, the exhibition includes an installation of mirrors, stained-glass panes and neon-works, for which Sarkis is best known.In an interview, Ayas explained:
This undertaking opens up a space in which the potential of art will be reanimated. Few artists have combined artistic ingenuity with subtle critique of history as deftly as Sarkis. Against the current landscape of deep uncertainties, with and through Sarkis’s intense and perfectionist oeuvre, and especially with his magnum opus in the making, you will be able to enter a proposition that will reveal his profound concern for humanity. Thanks to his rich arsenal of visual, architectural, and musical apparatuses, we will all be able to tune into hidden signals and frames encrypted in images and visions; dig deeper into our contemporary lived experience; perhaps hurt but also hopefully heal. The focus is the transformative power of art, as well as the timelessness and the timeliness of his oeuvre.[4]
Ayas is also Turkish-born, though she now directs the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. She has published extensively, and has participated in many biennials in recent years, including Venice, Moscow, and Shanghai.
Ayas’ statement is especially interesting to consider along with the Sarkis’ previous statement about the installation, because Ayas specifically highlights the healing quality of his work. In this way, Sarkis may indeed reveal a great deal about what it means to be Turkish today. His aim to reach beyond geopolitical boundaries reveals his desire not to dwell on the tumultuous history of Turkey, but rather to look towards a brighter future.
Turkey at the 2015 Biennale: Success or Avoidance?
The 2015 Venice Biennale was an especially poignant era specifically for Turkey, but also for Armenia, as the year marked the 100 year-anniversary of the Armenian genocide. The Republic of Armenia won the prestigious Golden Lion award in 2015 for best national pavilion, which explicated the importance of the genocide and diaspora in Armenia’s history and identity.[5] Although it would have been unrealistic to expect Turkey to suddenly acknowledge its role in the genocide at the Biennale, it is slightly surprising that the Turkish pavilion avoided political themes entirely.[6] Yet, the installation itself is aesthetically breathtaking.[7] The mirrors covered in dotted patterns force the viewers to question their own depth perception, and the persistence of industrial materials against the old brick walls creates an interesting interplay of the old and the new.
Sarkis claimed to seek healing by moving beyond geopolitics, and his work falls on the complete opposite end of the political spectrum as Armenia, by essentially saying nothing about the world itself. This lack of involvement is extremely complex, because Sarkis was given the task not only to present his personal work, but also to represent Turkey as a whole. Furthermore, Turkey’s infamous crackdowns on censorship issues and extremely conservative government dramatically complicate the nation’s role in Biennales. Should artists like Sarkis risk their own safety simply to make a statement? Or, should they follow Sarkis’ pattern of avoided controversial topics altogether? These are not simple questions to answer, but are critical to understand when approaching work such as Respiro.
SarkisZabunyan (Sarkis)
Sarkis is a Turkish-born Armenian artist currently living in France. He is a conceptual artist and was deeply influenced by Joseph Beuys early on in his career. He first became popular when he won the painting prize in the 1967 Paris Biennial, and later taught at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg from 1980-1990.
He has participated in many biennials including Venice, Sydney, Istanbul and Moscow.He participated in an exhibition titled “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013” at the 2013 Venice Biennale which included work by many other artists including Sol LeWitt, Claes Oldenburg, Carl Andre, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Smithson, just to name a few. The project was a recreation of the 1969 show “Live in Your Heads. When Attitudes Become Form,” which is widely recognized for the curators’ radical approach to exhibition practice.[8]
In short, Sarkis was no stranger to the contemporary art world in 2015 when he was selected to represent Turkey.Sarkis’ celebrity status is in many ways representative of patterns prevalent at many biennials; perhaps a large part of the reason he was selected to represent Turkey was in fact his fame. Interestingly, Turkey itself is currently wrought with political turmoil, and yet the work that appeared at the 2015 Biennale is as apolitical as possible. Many Turkish artists working today explicitly depict war, social inequity, and censorship, just to name a few of the polarizing subjects at play in the contemporary art scene. Yet, the 2015 Biennale installation intentionally avoided involvement in this type of discourse.
[1] For more on the genocide, see Stella Morabito’s “What You Should Know About the Armenian Genocide,” The Federalist, April 24, 2015, accessed April 30, 2016,
[2] Turkish Cultural Foundation, “A Brief Outline of Turkish History,” accessed May 30, 2016,
[3] Pavilion of Turkey, la Biennale di Venezia, “Sarkis: Respiro,” accessed April 14, 2016,
[4] e-flux, “Pavilion of Turkey at the Venice Biennale: Sarkis, Respiro,” accessed April 14, 2016,
[5] Randy Kennedy, “Venice Biennale Awards Announced,” New York Times, May 10, 2015, Accessed May 20, 2016,
[6] David Lister, “Venice Biennale 2015: Why this year could be more political than the General Election,” The Independent, May 1, 2015, accessed April 14, 2016,
[7] For an excellent view of the pavilion, see VernissageTV, “Sarkis: Respiro / Pavilion of Turkey at Venice Art Biennale 2015,” accessed April 14, 2016, venice-art-biennale-2015/.
[8] For more detailed information on Sarkis’ biography and works, see his website,