Sharjah Ruler Announces the Opening of an Art Exhibition 'The Other Side of Silence'

Art is love <3

His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, inaugurated Hrair Sarkissian’s art exhibition “The Other Side of Silence” at the Sharjah Art Foundation on Saturday!

The Sharjah Art Foundation, in collaboration with Galérie Bonnier Constellation in Stockholm and the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, Netherlands, is organizing the first investigative exhibition by Hrair Sarkissian, which will run until January 30, 2022!

His Highness toured the exhibition, listening to an explanation from Hrair Sarkissian about his works over the last fifteen years, which take the visitor on a photographic journey to the squares of Aleppo, Latakia, and Damascus, as well as through the skies over Palmyra and the snow-covered landscapes of contemporary Armenia.

The exhibition investigates the histories of demise, the architecture of violence, and the possibilities of the photographic medium, and is based on two major commissions: “Last Seen” (2018-2021) by the Sharjah Art Foundation and “Sweet and Sour” (2021-2022) by Bonnefantin.

Hrair Sarkissian entered the world of photography through his father’s photography studio, “Dream Color,” in Damascus, and then journeyed to Holland to study visual arts, where he proceeded analog photography as a main medium and tested his skills through his unwavering quest of elucidating the hidden stories in conflicts.

Sarkissian’s large-frame camera photographs evolved and continued to evolve throughout his life, embracing his fixation with the role of “chance” in capturing hidden narratives, as if he were an excavator and a storyteller at the same time. His work draws on individual and collective memory, venturing into stories that official records and sources cannot tell, in addition to his work on the use of photographic methods to elicit scenes revealing historical trauma. Through pre-designed scenes, such methods allow the spectator to consider the formal aspects of the image and assess the possibilities of what lies beneath its surface.