BIRGIT JÜRGENSSEN AWARD 2021 Aykan Safoğlu. When a wave breaks ...
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The Birgit Jürgenssen Prize, endowed with 5,000 euros, has been awarded every year since 2004 in memory of the artist Birgit Jürgenssen, who formerly taught at the Academy. The award is presented in cooperation by the Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Public Service and Sports, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Hubert Winter to a student of the University of Fine Arts for work in the media field, especially artistic photography and video or (digital) media art.
The jury awarded the Birgit Jürgenssen Prize 2021 to Aykan Safoğlu. The artist's work revolves around life, migration and family stories and thus the past, which in Safoğlu's work is always portrayed through the mirror of personal experience and feeling. The artist skillfully relates intimate memory work to the media conditions of its storage, documentation, and reproduction in film, photography, and scanning. The material qualities of the media are made present and at the same time used as a metaphor for the contents depicted in his films. In this way, Safoğlu succeeds in setting political issues and image politics in parallel in his works, which are articulated not only cinematically but also as expansive installations.
Jury members: Veronika Dirnhofer, Dorit Margreiter, Vanessa Joan Müller, Peter Noever and Marlies Wirth.
Aykan Safoğlu is a PhD-in-Practice student at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.