Aykan Safoǧlu

20 November 2013 / Acting Archives

Aykan Safoğlu: Off-White Tulips (Kırık Beyaz Laleler), 2013, HD, Colour, 24´, Turkish; English s.t.

Aykan Safoǧlu
Off-White Tulips, 2013


Off-White Tulips is a tribute to the US-American writer James Baldwin. In this dense video essay, the artist links Baldwin’s self-imposed exile in Turkey with his own biographical details and an exploration of his native country. With the help of old photographs, we follow the path through Istanbul equally of James Baldwin as much as of Aykan Safoǧlu and his family. The emphasis on both personal stories quickly begins to blur fact and fiction. Safoǧlu calls this form biomythography – a type of invented life story coined by the American writer and activist Audre Lord, who described herself as a ‘black lesbian feminist mother warrior poet’. Off-White Tulips looks at history from marginal perspectives in order to explore alternative interpretations of cultural artefacts and differences, queer politics and identity. It is concerned with black survival strategies in a white mainstream. The film was awarded the Oberhausen Grand Prize at the Short Film Festival in Oberhausen in 2013.