Sarkis: Children’s Rain Call with the Colours of the Rainbow

Dirimart is pleased to announce Sarkis’ fifth solo exhibition, Children’s Rain Call with the Colours of the Rainbow, at the gallery. Inspired by the artist’s workshops with children at the Venice and Mardin Biennials, the exhibition showcases the artist’s recent series of artwork titled Rain with Rainbow Colours (Children’s Call), which was created by the collective efforts of children living around the Dolapdere district of Istanbul.

As with all of Sarkis’ works, his various workshops with children, conducted over many years, emerge from the experiences developed before and after his previous exhibitions. The idea of involving children in the artist’s artistic production first arose from the idea that the simple gestures in his artwork Sarkis’ Films (1997–1998), which consisted of his scenarios based on these gestures and was also shown at Dirimart Pera between 1–24 September 2023, are also applicable by children. Since 2000, a series of workshops focused on bridging the gap between art and life through the joy and bloom of children has become a central theme in Sarkis’ practice.

In 2000, in Carquefou, children participated in Le défilé du siècle en fluo [The Parade of the Century in Neon] by wearing neon costumes tailored for them. Every weekend for four months on the city streets, they recounted their first-time experiences that week. In 2002, Sarkis invited children at the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt to paint in the way they imagined Joseph Beuys’s paintings exhibited facing back. The same year, Sarkis began a series of watercolour workshops, Watercolour in Water, with children spread over many cities like Paris, Istanbul, and Tokyo, which some continue to this day. These workshops became a significant part of his artistic journey, forming educational programs that connect with the potential of children from different age groups. The 2002 exhibition Ateliers Comme Exposition [Workshops as Exhibition] at Passage de Retz, Paris, was the first to focus entirely on children’s workshops.

Sarkis’ Respiro exhibition at the Turkish Pavilion of the 2015 Venice Biennale combined his technique at Silvacane Abbey in 2001, where he directly painted glass surfaces with finger touches, with the ‘rainbow’ theme that he integrated into his practice as neon forms from 2012 onwards. In this installation, children used their fingers to imprint rainbow colours onto large mirrors, creating reflections that expanded the space and invited the viewer to increase hope through colour.
In Children’s Rain Call with the Colours of the Rainbow, 49 small mirrors individually and collectively created by children living in the Dolapdere area reflect colourful depictions of rain. Like the universal experience of rain, the children’s workshops come to life through collaborative performative productions with local schools and community associations in the Dolapdere area, the outcome of which is placed in the gallery space. With its themes of childhood, rainbows, shared experiences, and the essence of touching, the exhibition invites viewers to reconsider co-existence and shared experiences.

Sarkis will also give an artist talk titled ‘Sarkis’ Exhibitions with and for Children from 2000 to the Present’ on 7 December at 4.00 p.m. at Dirimart Dolapdere.

Children’s Rain Call with the Colours of the Rainbow will be on view at Dirimart Dolapdere from 4 December 2024 to 5 January 2025.

Exhibition text