SAHA supports Gropius Bau within the scope of Aykan Safoğlu’s new project entitled Paydos (End Of Work) in the group exhibition between 9 September 2026 – 17 January 2027.

Nowhere were the social and cultural changes of 1960s and 1970s West Germany more powerfully manifest than in Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighbourhood. Here, the broader transformations reshaping life in the Federal Republic through labour recruitment agreements with countries including Italy, Greece, and Turkey became visible at the local scale. Opening in autumn 2026, the group exhibition Kreuzberg: Kunst und Migration seit 1960 (Art and Migration since 1960) focuses on the diverse and largely overlooked cultural production on the topic of labour migration and on how artists in the neighbourhood have responded to the tensions and issues of their time.

With works by Alexis Akrithakis, Mehmet Aksoy, Atiye Altül, Ararat‑Verlag, Eduardo Arroyo, Paolo Baratella, Akbar Behkalam, Kaya Behkalam, Cecilia Boisier, Vlassis Caniaris, Nuray Demir, Grazia Eminente, Kerem Ergün, Harun Farocki, Mathèos Florakis, Esther Friedman, Abuzer Güler, Sarah Haffner, Kim Min-ki / Lee Hye-kyung, Azade Köker, Evelyn Kuwertz, Stathis Logothetis, Colette Lumiere, Mihály Moldvay, Mehrangis Montazami-Dabui, Pınar Öğrenci, Aras Ören und Friedrich Wilhelm Zimmermann, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Eduardo Paolozzi, Minh Duc Pham, Caroline Pinger, Jannis Psychopedis, Aykan Safoğlu, Ludmila Seefried‑Matějková, Sohrab Shahid Saless, Monika Sieveking, Antonio Skármeta, Hyun-Sook Song, Metin Talayman, Filiz Taşkın, Evanthia Tsantila, Mehmet Ünal, Natascha Ungeheuer, Irena Vrkljan, Hanefi Yeter and Serpil Yeter.

Aykan Safoğlu (1984, Istanbul) stages interdisciplinary narrations where his longings, dreams, and contradictions challenge historical time. Navigating still, moving, and performative images, Safoğlu makes intimate memory work that defies media conventions. His hybrid artistic forms fragment, reproduce and reorient ontological questions in film, photography, and performance. The artist holds an MA in Art in Context from Berlin University of the Arts (DE, 2010), and an MFA in Photography from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College (US, 2014) and a PhD in Practice from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (AT, 2025). The artist lives and works in Vienna.

About Gropius Bau

Located in the centre of Berlin, the Gropius Bau is a lively place to encounter art and each other. The internationally renowned institution stages large-scale exhibitions and performances by contemporary artists. Its diverse events focus on exchange and discussion, bringing together local and global perspectives. Here, artists shape the programme from within, not only showing their own work, but developing thematic or solo exhibitions of work by other artists. In some cases, they spend several years working in one of the Gropius Bau’s on-site studios, becoming deeply intertwined with the institution and shaping it with their ideas and vision.