Aykan Safoğlu
Aykan Safoğlu (1984) stages interdisciplinary narrations where his longings, dreams and contradictions challenge historical time. Appropriating technical failures, Safoğlu makes intimate memory work that defies media conventions. His hybrid artistic forms fragment, reproduce, and reorient ontological questions in film, photography, and performance. The artist received his MFA in Photography from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2014) and holds a MA in “Art in Context” from UdK Berlin (2010). Recent solo exhibitions include Reckless at Kulturhaus Obere Stube (2024), Taurus at Pilot, Vienna (2023), Recess at Salt Galata, Istanbul (2022), Ebbe/Flut at Coalmine, Winterthur (2022), and I’ll Be Your Mirror at Kunstverein Göttingen (2021). His work was also included in notable exhibition formats, such as Les Rencontres d’Arles (2021), the 39th EVA International (2021), VIDEONALE.18 (2021), and the 11th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (2020). Recipient of the Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen at the 59thInternational Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2013) and the Birgit Jürgenssen Prize (2021), Safoğlu holds a PhD in Practice from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2025). The artist lives and works in Vienna.
ROSETTE (ROSE WINDOW)
2024
print on foil mounted on acrylic glass
Courtesy of the artist
Rosette (Rose Window) is a giant puzzle laid out, partially complete, on the floor. It pieces together references and histories connecting Turkey, Germany, and the wider context of Middle East Europe. The image is of the waiting hall of the Sirkeci railway terminus in Istanbul. Designed by the German architect August Jasmund toward the end of the 19th century, the building was the Eastern terminus of the Orient Express. In the 1960s, following the recruitment agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and Turkey, the station became the point of departure for many migrant workers from Turkey on their journey to Germany. The window, and building, project a German, Orientalist view on the visual language of the Middle East, especially the Ottoman Empire.