Given your convenient absence
Aykan Safoğlu and Masha Godovannaya
Artist Talk
February 23, 2019, 6:00 PM


A discussion on finding artistic ways to “accompany” someone along the lines of grief and loss, queer resilience and elective affinities, contextualizing and expanding on Aykan Safoğlu's exhibition ziyaret, visit.

“The present moment is made possible by the fantasy of you, laden with the x qualities I can project onto you, given your convenient absence.”1 Inspired by feminist cultural researcher Lauren Berlant, Aykan Safoğlu and Masha Godovannaya will discuss the concept of “convenient absence” and the particular potential of analogue photography and film making to create projected illusions of the past, the present and the future.


Aykan Safoğlu (born 1984, Istanbul, Turkey) lives and works in Istanbul and Berlin. His recent exhibitions include Off-White Tulips, Ystad's Konstmuseum, Ystad (solo exhibition, 2016/17), Klassensprachen, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2018); ğ – soft g – queer forms migrate, Schwules Museum* Berlin (2017); Father Figures are Hard to Find, nGbK Berlin (2016); Home Works Forum 7, Ashkal Alwan (Beirut, 2015); Sight and Sounds: Turkey, Jewish Museum (New York, 2014). His film Off-White Tulips (2013) was awarded with the Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen at the 59th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.

Masha Godovannaya (born 1976, Moscow, Russia) is a visual artist, queer-feminist researcher, curator, and educator. Approaching art production as collective action, her artistic practice is closely connected to artistic research and draws on combinations of approaches and spheres such as moving image theory, sociology, queer theory, feminist studies, and contemporary art. Masha’s films and visual works have been shown at various occasions, such as Rotterdam Film Festival, London Film Festival, Manifesta10, 7th Liverpool Biennial, and at the Tate Modern, and Center Georges Pompidou. In 2015 together with group of artists, activists, and social researches from St. Petersburg, Russia, she co-founded a queer-feminist affinity art group “Unwanted Organisation”.

1 Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism, London, 2011.