Belonging and Companionship

Belonging and Companionship presents a selection of Aykan Safoğlu’s video and films that he produced between 2013 – 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 to be held on 10 May will be followed by an artist talk with Aykan Safoğlu, moderated by Bilge Taş. All screenings and events of Belonging and Companionship are free of admissions.

About Aykan Safoğlu
Born in Istanbul and graduated from the Art in Context MA program at Universität der Künste, Berlin. He received his MFA in Photography from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, NY. In 2013, he received the Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen at the 59th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Safoğlu was a fine arts fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart in 2018. Safoğlu is currently an artist-in-residence for the January - August term at Kulturakademie Tarabya in Istanbul.

About Bilge Taş 
She worked for several film festivals, including Flying Broom International Women’s Film Festival, Festival on Wheels, Ankara International Film Festival as well as co- founding Pink Life QueerFest. She received an MA in Women and Gender Studies from Ankara University. She is currently writing her PhD thesis on political economy of film festivals in Turkey.