Djochkoun Sami: Contemporary Figurative and Expressionist Art

Djochkoun Sami is a Bulgarian-born contemporary artist based in Istanbul, Turkey, whose creative practice spans painting, illustration, and design. Having earned both a Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts from the Faculty of Painting at Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts, Sami has developed a distinctive visual language that occupies the delicate threshold between expression and figuration. His paintings often weave together architectural and historical echoes, utilizing a restrained, earthy palette and a meticulous, drawing-centered process. Central to the work of Djochkoun Sami is the exploration of memory and collective traumas, such as war, displacement, and the remnants of totalitarian regimes. He frequently uses abandoned buildings from the recent past as conceptual starting points, stripping them of their specific context and politics to transform them into anonymous, depoliticized spaces. These settings are often imbued with a quiet drama through the interplay of light and shadow, where objects, stones, and organic fragments share a horizontally unfolding sense of time. Beyond his individual studio practice, Djochkoun Sami has contributed to a wide range of cultural projects, including group exhibitions, illustrated magazines, poetry books, and theatre posters. His work reflects a deep awareness of European post-war painting undercurrents while maintaining a contemporary relevance. By merging themes and techniques across oil, drawing, and mixed media, Sami creates surfaces where line and form are sharpened to a resonant clarity, inviting viewers to reflect on the power of memory to resurface, distort, and take new form.