A prominent and influential conceptual artist, Sarkis Zabunyan, known as Sarkis, has produced films, drawings, texts, photographs, and site-specific works that explore wide-ranging themes, including his own physical and psychological experience and issues of exile, freedom, and cultural difference. In his exhibition “Izik/Twin” (2013), he responded to the gallery space and context—the site of an old wheat mill based in Istanbul—merging architectural and historical references with the artist’s concern with material and gesture. The exhibition included a semi-permeable wooden crate placed on shipping pallets, containing bubble-wrap and covered by a copper lid, creating tension between the work’s disposable and more permanent materials, and a video in which the artist drips candlewax into his palm, turning a gesture of supplication into a source of physical pain. In other work, Sarkis has explored the relationship between cinema and contemporary art.