Djochkoun Sami is an artist born in Bulgaria (1973), currently working in Istanbul, Turkey. Graduate of Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts, Faculty of Painting, Istanbul (BFA / MFA). Regularly exhibits his work in various group shows, illustrated magazines, poetry books, and theatre posters.
Sami‘s paintings demonstrate a nuanced blend of stylistic elements, as he navigates the space between expression and figuration, and often incorporate architectural and historical references, while maintaining an affinity for the templates of formalist painting. His limited colour palette supports his drawing-based process, making visible an effort towards achieving pictorial and formal values. He often incorporates architectural and historical references into his work, such as abandoned buildings from the recent past, stripped of their context and historical specificity, resulting in anonymous and depoliticized homogeneous spaces. His use of muted, earthy tones creates a sense of timelessness and universality, while his brushwork and mark-making imbue the works with a sense of immediacy and urgency. Sami‘s paintings feature a horizontally-based perception of time, with objects, rocks, organic matter, and voids occupying the same space, with interplays between light and shadow.
His practice explores the power of memory and its potential to resurge or transfigure itself into new conglomerations and physical entities, and is fuelled by an interest in the collective traumas caused by war, displacement and totalitarian regimes, abiding by a certain strain of thought within European post-war painting. Through his attempts to engage with fading or vanquished historical memory, Sami investigates the contradictions that the modernist project in all its aspects has brought, exploring collective memory as a form of storytelling by employing references and motifs of modernity, progress, regress, and the grand narratives of the past and approaching memory as a phenomenon that is intangible and abstract. In some of his paintings, he illustrates how the political is reduced to its grotesque dimension, with power struggles, flag-waving, and the reselling of imaginary dreams. His work engages in a hauntology research of its own, exploring how the agendas of contemporary societies are shaped by ghosts of the past.
You can view & buy selected works online at
2024 - "In The End, There Is No End", Istanbul Concept Gallery, İstanbul, TR
2022 - "Slow Homecoming", Art Gallery Silistra, Silistra, BG
2022 - "Sumerki", Istanbul Concept Gallery, İstanbul, TR
2021 - "Inventory", Gallery Soyut, Ankara, TR
2015 - "Playing Backwards", The Other Art Fair solo booth, London, UK
2013 - "The Contract", Mabeyn Gallery, Istanbul, TR
2024 - "The Luxembourg Effect", Varna City Art Gallery, BG
2023 - "#HeyFreedom", Turkish Journalists Association Museum, Istanbul, TR
2023 - "HOME", The Department Store Gallery, London, UK
2023 - "Ar(t)chive V", Istanbul Concept Gallery, Istanbul, TR
2023 - "Beginning From the Middle", Artİstanbul Feshane, Istanbul, TR
2023 - "Parrhesia III", Art Contact Art Fair, Istanbul, TR
2023 - "Equinox", Istanbul Concept Gallery, Istanbul, TR
2023 - "Parrhesia II", Ankara Art Fair, TR
2023 - "La Liberte", Istanbul Concept Studio, Istanbul, TR
2023 - "Freedom is Our Character", Istanbul Concept Gallery, Istanbul, TR
2023 - "Freedom is Your Character", Pera Palace, TR
2023 - "Democratic 100", Istanbul Concept Gallery, Istanbul, TR
2022 - "Stalker", Pera Palace, Istanbul, TR
2022 - "Winged Words / Layers IIa", Mahal, Çanakkale, TR
2022 - "Trace", Chamber of Architects of Turkey’s Gallery, Istanbul, TR
2022 - "Friends of the Sea" Biennial for Contemporary Art, Burgas, BG
2022 - "Ar(t)chive", Istanbul Concept, Istanbul, TR
2022 - "Parrhesia", ArtContact Art Fair, Istanbul, TR
2022 - "Where is your home?", Pera Palace, Istanbul, TR
2022 - "Not to Forget", Circolo di Roma, Istanbul, TR
2021 - "Aura", Circolo di Roma, Istanbul, TR
2021 - "10x10", Istanbul Concept, Istanbul, TR
2020 - Step İstanbul, Istanbul, TR
2019 - "New December", Soyut, Ankara, TR
2019 - "Highlights from the TUYAP Collection", IKUSAG, Istanbul, TR
2018 - "The Storyteller", 28. İstanbul Art Fair, Istanbul, TR
2018 - "River's Energy", Tedi, Varna, BG
2017 - "Utopia: Classless-Borderless", 27. İstanbul Art Fair, Istanbul, TR
2016 - "Unexpected Territories", 26. İstanbul Art Fair, Istanbul, TR
2016 - "Artists' Nazim", Istanbul, TR
2015 - "Strange Days", 25. İstanbul Art Fair, Istanbul, TR
2015 - "Amarcord", 25. İstanbul Art Fair, Istanbul, TR
2015 - The Other Art Fair, London, UK
2015 - "Cold. Warm. Hot", ArtNext, Istanbul, TR
2014 - "Dispossess", 24. İstanbul Art Fair, Istanbul, TR
2014 - "For the Sake of Remembrance", 24. İstanbul Art Fair, Istanbul, TR
2014 - "Focus I: Free Association", Daire, İstanbul, TR
2013 - "Is there an Intervention?", 23. İstanbul Art Fair, Istanbul, TR
2013 - "I Carry Everything With Me", Kolektif, 23. İstanbul Art Fair, Istanbul, TR
2013 - "How Green Was My Valley (From the beginning until today, landscape in Turkish painting)", Istanbul, TR
2012 - "Sorry, I Couldn't Recognize You", Port-Art, Ankara, TR
2012 - "Draft", Mabeyn Gallery, Istanbul, TR
2011 - "Scratches on the Surface", Art Suites, Istanbul, TR
2010 - "Very Beautiful", İstanbul 2010 - European Capital of Culture, "Portable Art" exhibition series, Istanbul, TR
2010 - "Curiosity and Suspicion", Kent Gallery, Istanbul, TR
2010 - "Cold Element", Akademililer Sanat Merkezi, Istanbul, TR
2009 - "Fake Safari", Kolektif, 19. İstanbul Art Fair, Istanbul, TR
2009 - "Hayalet: My Name is Casper", Karşı Sanat Çalışmaları, Istanbul, TR
2008 - "Water!=Shining?", Cappadocia Art Festival, Mustafapaşa, TR
2006 - Cappadocia Art Festival, Mustafapaşa, TR
2001 - "SERG!", Group Albatros, Asmalimescit Minare Sk. No.15, Istanbul, TR
2011, MFA, Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts, Faculty of Painting, Istanbul
2004, BFA, Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts, Faculty of Painting, Istanbul