Born in 1938 in Istanbul, Turkey, Sarkis has been living and working in Paris since 1964.
Sarkis studied French, painting and interior design before moving to Paris in 1964. In 1967, he won the Biennale of Paris Painting Prize. The same year, Sarkis exhibited Connaissez- vous Joseph Beuys ? at the Salon de Mai in reference to the German artist he considers to be the most important of our time. In 1969, he was invited by art critic Harald Szeemann to take part in the now famous exhibition When attitudes become form at the Kunsthalle of Bern. Since he also deeply cares about transfer of knowledge, he ran the art department of the School of Decorative Arts of Strasbourg from 1980 to 1990, and worked as a seminar director at the Institut des Hautes Etudes en Arts Plastiques (IHEAP) created by Pontus Hulten from 1988 to 1995. He participates in reference exhibitions such as Documentas VI and VII (Germany), and the Biennales of Venice (Italy), Sydney (Australia), Shanghai (China), São Paulo (Brazil), Moscow (Russia) and Istanbul (Turkey). In 2015 he represented the Turkish Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, and in the same year participated in the Republic of Armenia exhibition which won the Golden Lion.
Sarkis' work has benefited from many important solo and group exhibitions, notably in 2021 at the Musée du Quai Branly with the exhibition Ex Africa curated by Philippe Dagen, at the Chapelle de la Visitation (Thonon-les-Bains) in 2019, at the Musée de Fécamp (Fécamp), at the Couvent des Cordeliers (Toulouse) in 2018 and at the Petit Palais (Paris) in 2016. In 2015, he had a solo exhibition at the Boghossian Foundation in Brussels, and exhibited the same year at MAXXI in Rome. In 2013, Sarkis participated in When attitudes become form, Bern 1969/Venice 2013 for the 55th edİtion of the Venice Biennale at the Prada Foundation, and took part in Ici, Ailleurs on the occasion of Marseille - Provence, European Capital of Culture, as well as the exhibition Modernity? Perspectives from France and Turkey, at the Istanbul Modern. Invited by the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam in 2012, he presented Ballads in the 5 000 m2 of the Submarine Wharf and exhibited the same year at the Triennial with Intense Proximité at the Palais de Tokyo. In 2011, he exhibited at the MAMCO (Geneva) with a major retrospective entitled Hôtel Sarkis. In 2010, Sarkis presents Passages at the Centre Pompidou (Paris) where Sarkis' creations enter into conversation with the works of Malevitch, Breton or Beuys. In 2007, he was present at the Bourdelle Museum, the Louvre Museum and the Maison Rouge (Paris), the Picasso Museum (Paris) in 2003, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon, the Museum of Modern Art in Céret, the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2002, the CAPC in Bordeaux in 2000 and 1976, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg in 1998 and 1988, the Museum of Fine Arts in Nantes in 1997, at the Magasin de Grenoble in 1991, the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Limoges in 1986, the Nouveau Musée de Villeurbanne in 1985, the ARC - Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1984, the Musée d'Art et d'Industrie de Saint-Étienne in 1974, the Musée Galliera (Paris) in 1973, and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1970 with Christian Boltanski.
Sarkis's works are featured in many internationally-renowned public collections in France and abroad, such as the Landes Museum (Germany), the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum (Netherland), the MAMCO (Switzerland), the Museu Serralves (Portugal), the Istanbul Modern (Turkey), the ZKM (Germany); the Pompidou Center, the City of Paris Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of the Castle of the Dukes of Württemberg, the Museum of Modern Art of Saint-Étienne, the Museums of the City of Strasbourg, the CAPC of Bordeaux, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Lyon, the MAC/VAL, the Fine Arts Museum of Nantes, the LAM, the Castle of Chaumont-sur-Loire, the IAC of Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes, the FRAC of Loire, Poitou- Charentes, Brittany, Alsace, Auvergne, Lorraine, Aquitaine, Franche-Comté, Languedoc- Roussillon, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Ile-de-France, the CNAP as well as the Departmental Collection of Seine-Saint-Denis (France).
Sarkis has been represented by la Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels, since 2011.