Djochkoun Sami (b. 1973, Bulgaria) lives and works in Istanbul, Turkey. He earned both his BFA and MFA from the Faculty of Painting at Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts, and his work has appeared in group exhibitions, illustrated magazines, poetry books, and theatre posters.
Sami’s paintings inhabit the threshold between expression and figuration, weaving architectural and historical echoes into the compositional discipline of formalist painting. Working with a restrained, earthy palette and a drawing-centred process, he builds surfaces where line and form are sharpened to clarity. Abandoned buildings from the recent past often serve as starting points—stripped of their original context and politics until they become anonymous, depoliticised spaces. Interplays of light and shadow lend these settings a quiet drama, while objects, stones, organic fragments, and voids share the same pictorial stage in a horizontally unfolding sense of time.
Memory—its power to resurface, distort, and take new form—is at the heart of his practice. His work is informed by an awareness of collective traumas: war, displacement, and the weight of totalitarian regimes, echoing certain undercurrents of European post-war painting. By engaging with fading or fractured histories, Sami reflects on the contradictions of the modernist project and treats collective memory as a form of storytelling—one that draws on symbols of progress and decline, on the grand narratives of the past, and on the elusive, intangible nature of memory itself.
In some works, the political is shown in its grotesque mask: power struggles reduced to theatre, flags raised in hollow ritual, dreams traded as commodities. Through these images, Sami quietly investigates how the present remains shaped by the lingering spectres of history—ghosts that, though unseen, still govern the imagination of contemporary society.
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
2025 - "Eyes Linger, Mind Follows", Belleville, Paris, FR
2025 - "The Luxembourg Effect", Rusi Karabiberov Art Gallery, Nova Zagora, BG
2025 - "Echo", Cağla Cabaoğlu Art Gallery, Istanbul, TR
2025 - "Resonance", Cağla Cabaoğlu Art 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