Born in 1973, Bulgaria. Graduate of Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts, Faculty of Painting, Istanbul (BFA, MFA). Regularly exhibiting at various group shows, illustrated magazines, poetry books, theatre posters. Lives and works in Istanbul, Turkey.
While including architectural and historical references in his works, he also maintains an affinity for the templates of formalist painting. The limited palette supporting his drawing based process indicates and makes visible an effort towards pictorial and formal values. Floating in between stylistic borders of expression and figuration, Sami’s works are frequently borrowing forgotten, abandoned architectural spaces belonging to the recent past, exposing possibilities for the existence of anonymous, depoliticized homogeneous spaces. In some of his recent works, stripped of any historicism or allusions, objects, rocks, organic matter and voids are accompanying a horizontally based perception of time.
With a cynicism characteristic of the artists grown and shaped in the totalitarian systems of Eastern Europe, Bulgaria-born Djochkoun Sami questions typical values that are taken for granted. His works employ references and motifs of modernity, progress, regress, and the grand narratives of the past. In some of his paintings, we can easily see how the political is reduced to its grotesque dimension: the game of power consists of a relentless struggle, flag-waving, and reselling of imaginary dreams. In a sense, Sami is engaged in a hauntology research of its own. After all, the agendas of contemporary societies are shaped by ghosts of the past.