Countdown starts to opening of ‘Respiro’

Curated by Defne Ayas, the Pavilion of Turkey is organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), and located at Sale d’Armi, Arsenale, in the main venue of the exhibition. The inauguration of the Pavilion of Turkey will be held on May 7. 

The installation will consist of two neon rainbows and two large-scale mirrors with fingerprints applied in watercolor by seven children named Abay, Anna, Aren, Helin, Karla, Claudia and Linda, together with several of his iconic sculptures and thirty-six stained glass panes featuring the artist’s photographs and found images. 

“Respiro” will be accompanied by a musical composition by Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi based on the Sarkis’s rendering of the rainbow’s seven colors as a system of partitions. The music will be played day and night, together with the neon rainbows breathing in and out for the duration of the exhibition. The music will be played live on May 7.

Six “messenger” installations, in addition to “Respiro” in the Pavilion of Turkey, will simultaneously be on view in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Turkey on May 7. 

As a prelude to “Respiro,” Sarkis has gifted a site-specific work titled “Golden Icon” to the exhibition hall of the Hrant Dink Foundation’s newly opened venue in Istanbul. Presented as a golden square, the work was created at the same scale as Sarkis’s piece in Venice.