At 67m height, the golden statue of Victoria is overlooking the city of Berlin from atop the Siegessäule (victory column). Facing west, the angel’s skirt appears as if ruffled by the wind blowing towards her. Albeit cast in solid bronze, it seems as if she were moving, and moved by the turmoil surrounding her, dynamically and determined. Translating between still and moving image, Aykan Safoğlu’s artistic practice speaks to this kind of relationship to movement, and to time – like the so-called “Else” does. While fragments of analogue photographs often form the basis of the artist’s moving image works, his photographs in turn grapple with the medium’s ability to stretch shared moments in collective memory and to capture, or disintegrate, our perception of linear time.

The golden angel has reappeared throughout Safoğlu’s work as Angelus Novus, in reference to Paul Klee’s eponymous painting (1920), and Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the work as an allegory of historical progress. First erected to commemorate Prussian military victories and later moved by the Nazi regime according to their plans to redesign the city, at its present location, the monument has gained the status of a significant symbol for queer life in Berlin. Silkscreened onto the fragile surface of heat transfer foil, Safoğlu’s iridescent reproductions of the angel in movement are reminiscent of the holograms we know from banknotes or passports as a marker – to distinguish the original from the copy; to give the right to mobility, and to grant citizenship. Safoğlu’s Angelus Novus is navigating past-present-future tenses as a “migrant image”, an emblem of emancipation and self-determination; as such, she is always facing a storm.

Aykan Safoğlu explores cultural belonging, migration, familial lineage, and historical time, which are always portrayed through the mirror of his personal experience in life and practice. Safoğlu juxtaposes intimate memory work against media conventions, questioning storage, documentation, and reproduction in film, photography, and performance. The artist received his MFA in Photography from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include 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). Safoğlu is currently a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.