Aykan Safoğlu

Born 1984 in Istanbul/Turkey.

Aykan Safoğlu lives and works in Berlin/Germany. He holds a master’s degree in photography from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, Annandale-On-Hundson, NY/USA, and a master’s degree from the Art in Context program at Universität der Künste Berlin.

In his art practice, Aykan Safoğlu forges relationships – friendships, even – across cultural, geographic, linguistic, as well as temporal boundaries. Working across film, photography and performance, he makes open-ended enquiries into cultural belonging, creativity and kinship.

Recent solo exhibitions include Off-White Tulips at Ystads Konstmuseum, Ystad/Sweden in 2016. Selected group exhibitions include The Bill: For Collective Unconscious at Artspace, Auckland/New Zealand (2016), Father Figures are Hard to Find at nGbK, Berlin (2016), Home Works 7 at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut/Lebanon (2015), and Sight and Sounds: Turkey at Jewish Museum, New York, NY/USA (2014). In 2016 Aykan Safoğlu was an artist in residence at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, and from 2014–2015 a SAHA resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam/Netherlands. He was awarded the Principal Prize of the City of Oberhausen at the 59th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany in 2013.