Sarkis — Ma Chambre de la Rue Krutenau à l'Île San Lazzaro, Venice 1990

Sarkis, Ma Chambre de la Rue Krutenau à l'Île San Lazzaro — invitation card, Venice 1990

A period invitation card for Sarkis's installation Ma Chambre de la Rue Krutenau à l'Île San Lazzaro, presented jointly by Les Musées de la Ville de Strasbourg and Le Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble, Magasin, with the collaboration of the A.F.A.A. and the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris. The exhibition was staged at the Couvent des Pères Méchitaristes, Île San Lazzaro degli Armeni, Venice, opening 23 May 1990 and running through 30 September.

The recto reproduces a photograph of the neon installation — a luminous, biomorphic form suspended against deep black, its teal glow pooling outward. The verso carries the full institutional text in French, including vaporetto departure times from Riva Schiavoni. That logistical detail is characteristic of the work's situation: an installation accessible only by water, on an Armenian monastery island, organised through a relay of French cultural institutions. The card is itself a document of that improbable geography.

The work belongs to a sustained period in Sarkis's practice in which memory, displacement, and the charged specificity of place — particularly sites carrying religious, historical, or linguistic weight — became structural to the installation itself. San Lazzaro, home to the Méchitarist congregation and one of the oldest Armenian cultural centres in Europe, was not incidental to the work. It was the work's condition.

Printed card, approximately 15 × 10.5 cm. Light wear consistent with age; overall very good. Scarce.