About
Safa Baran Öcal (b. 1994, Diyarbakır) is a visual artist based in Ankara. Working with photography, video and installation, he develops a self-documentary practice that starts from questions about existence, the self and change, and has taken his work into public space.
He studied Photography at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Marmara University, Istanbul, and holds an MA in Communication, Art and Culture from the University of Minho, Portugal. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions in Istanbul and Amasya and in group exhibitions in Istanbul and Ankara.
Photography is how I understand myself and my surroundings, and how I see and show the changes I go through. I try to make a documentary of my own life: the things I have been through, the sorrows and the joys, the small details I notice.
I use photography as a kind of therapy. I take pictures when I feel stuck, when a question keeps circling without an answer, when I want to understand what life is about. The act makes me stop and stay with the moment, because to understand something you have to stand in front of it and look closely.
My work usually starts from a question I cannot answer alone. I use art to meet people who ask the same questions: to hear their answers if they have found them, and to keep looking together if they have not. Art can show you the street you walk down every day as if for the first time. It can give you hope about the world, open a different possibility, and become a key to yourself, your life and the people around you. When I give a problem a visual form I understand it better, and I find out whether the world looks this way only to me. How else can anyone confirm they are not losing their mind?
Safa Baran Öcal · Born Diyarbakır, 1994 · Lives and works in Ankara