Aykan Safoğlu

It all starts with a tree falling one night under the artist's window. From this event and the triggering memory of a summer holiday spent with his parents on the island of Imbros, the artist unfolds the story of his own experience of uprooting. A Turkish, educated at the German high school in Istanbul, he went into exile in Berlin at the time of his studies, following in the footsteps of his aunts and uncle. The studies at the German high school, which were supposed to lead to a better life, bring to light the tearing apart of two cultures, two countries. The intimate story, that of a family and personal reconciliation, is based on personal photographic archives, Safoğlu's favourite material, whose work is based on the handling of existing images, the palimpsest, the linking with orality. Here the photographs seem to have been crushed. Their reconstituted framework, they scroll like a conveyor belt evoking a road, punctuated by the artist's steps that accompany the narrative movement.