Belonging and Companionship

Aykan Safoğlu

May 10, 2019
8.15 pm
Entrance is free; films are in German, Turkish and English (all with Turkish subtitles), and the talk with be in Turkish

The Pera Museum, Meşrutiyet Cad 65, Tepebaşı, Beyoğlu, Istanbul

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Belonging and Companionship presents a selection of Aykan Safoğlu’s video and films that he produced between 2013 and 2015. An immigrant himself, Safoğlu traces loss, death, belonging and relationships in his art practice.

The artist’s films pose questions that prompt the audience to think collectively. He deciphers the production and transformation of tools and forms, i.e. language and image, that characterize life and death. Using exposure, light and shutter, Safoğlu’s latest works borrow Barthes’ quotes on life trapped in a moment/image; for us to reflect on “a photograph’s certain and fugitive testimony that eliminates one’s emotional and symbolic sense of time”. Woven into the extending temporality of migration and loss, his archaeological narratives question our relationship with death.

The screening will be held on 10 May and followed by an artist talk with Aykan Safoğlu, moderated by Bilge Taş.