Artist-in-Residence

Borna Sammak

Borna Sammak In collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Untitled (Process Image), 2024. Photo credit: Carlos Avendaño.

Borna Sammak’s artistic journey began as a high school apprentice at The Fabric Workshop and Museum. He frequently draws inspiration from his everyday urban surroundings as well as film, television, YouTube, and digital advertising. Spanning a range of media—including installation, videos, and wall-pieces—his works reconfigure mundane objects, texts, signs, slogans, clothes, or cartoons into compressed metaphors and dense patterns. Through these acts of combination and juxtaposition, the artist embraces humor, awkward moments, and occasional feelings of dread.

Sammak’s jacket, created specifically for Soft/Cover, gives form to a digital collage that combines and rearranges three found wallpaper patterns. In partnership with FWM’s Studio team, Sammak designed and printed yardage that incorporates bamboo stalks, animal-head canes, and an art-deco swirl. The print’s bright colors and simplified forms draw inspiration from one of the artist’s long-time favorite jackets, a vintage Michigan Rag Co. Fish Hooded Jacket. Sammak’s bespoke oversized hoodie embodies personal comfort in everyday wear.

Art

From the Archive

A photo of the artist Borna Sammak, a brown-skinned man with a dark beard, as he leans over the table to arrange drawings on a long table. A woman with curly hair watches as he works.

A photo of two women studio artists cutting and arranging scraps of paper. They are standing in front of a long black and white repeat pattern of trees and branches.

A photo of three artists working from various sides of a long table. They are arranging drawings and scraps of paper over a long repeat pattern of gridded lines.

A photo of intersecting green, brown, and yellow lines that appear to be canes.

A photo of cane head drawings resembling animals such as duck heads and serpents.

Artist Bio

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1986. Based in Brooklyn.

Sammak’s artistic journey began as a high school apprentice at The Fabric Workshop and Museum; he subsequently obtained a BFA from New York University (2011). Sammak’s work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions in the U.S. and internationally, including at Dallas Contemporary (2022); JTT, New York (2021); McNamara Art Projects, Hong Kong (2020); Sadie Coles HQ, London (2019); and Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2016). His work has been included in group shows at Tainan Art Museum, Tainan (2022); Museum of the Moving Image, New York (2021); Bortalami, New York (2021); Massimo de Carl, London (2020); Tanya Bonakdar, New York (2018); Marciano Foundation, Los Angeles (2018); National Gallery of Victoria, Victoria (2016); two exhibitions co-curated by Jeffrey Deitch in Shanghai (2016) and Miami (2017); Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York (2015); and Gagosian Gallery, Athens (2015). His works are held in several public collections including The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, and the Yuz Museum, Shangha. Sammak has been profiled in Interview Magazine and his work has been written about in the Dallas Morning News, Artnet News, Cultured Magazine, W Magazine, and Vogue. He is represented by Sadie Coles, London and JTT, New York.