Sweet & Sour, Hrair Sarkissian (2021-2022) (EMPIRE LINES x Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Lisson Gallery)

Conceptual photographer Hrair Sarkissian moves between Syria, Armenia, and Turkey, capturing present absences in personal and political histories in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Hrair Sarkissian uses photography, installation, moving image, and sound to reflect on social issues, often silenced or obscured from view. Born and raised in Syria, the grandson of refugees of the Armenian Genocide in 1915, much of his work explores the lived experiences of intergenerational trauma, with respect to individuals and diverse diasporic communities.

Sweet & Sour (2021-2022), a three-channel video installation currently on view at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, reflects on memory and storytelling. Hrair discusses the significance of the Maruta Mountain in Armenian culture, and shares images of his ancestral home of Khantsorig, a village in the Sassoun region of present-day Turkey. We also explore the role of emotion and subjectivity in his practice, contrasting his approach to series like Last Seen (2018-2021) with the more detached, extractive approaches typical of photojournalism.

Hrair explains his early training at his father’s photographic studio in Damascus, and the role of Armenians in the development of studio photography in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. With Sea of Trees (2025), we move between Hrair’s exhibition environments to the volcanic Aokigahara forest on Mount Fuji, discussing how different cultural narratives and contexts have inspired his artistic practice. We look towards new works in production for an international art festival in Japan, and suggest of the long-term creative relationships within his own career that also connect times, places, and migrations - returning to Wolverhampton with Deathscape (2021), an audio installation for British Art Show 9 in 2021.

Hrair Sarkissian: Other Pains is at Wolverhampton Art Gallery until 22 June 2025. You can hear the artist in conversation at the gallery on Saturday 14 June.

Finding My Blue Sky, curated by Dr. Omar Kholeif, is at Lisson Gallery in London until 26 July 2025.

The Aichi Triennale 2025: A Time Between Ashes and Roses, curated by Hoor Al-Qasimi, opens in Japan on 13 September 2025.

For more about Mahmoud Darwish, read about Miloš Trakilović’s installation 564 Tracks (Not a Love Song Is Usually a Love Song) (2024) at KW Institute in Berlin, in the New Internationalist: newint.org/art/2025/spotlight-milos-trakilovic

For more about diasporic communities in Lebanon and Syria, listen to Sara Shamma’s live episode on World Civil War Portraits (2015) with Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, and the National Museum of Damascus, part of ⁠PEACE FREQUENCIES 2023⁠: pod.link/1533637675/episode/6c9af892a1a8e1450c2cc4b73f226835

For more about studio photography in Palestine through the Ottoman Empire and British Mandate, hear curator Rachel Dedman’s EMPIRE LINES episode about an UNRWA Dress from Ramallah, Palestine (1930s)⁠: pod.link/1533637675/episode/92c34d07be80fe43a8e328705a7d80cb

And read into the exhibition, Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery, at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge and the Whitworth in Manchester, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/textiles-in-cambridge-palestinian-embroidery-at-kettles-yard

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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