Wonderland (2016) and other works

Overview

Erkan Özgen explores the impact of war and terror on the collective and personal lives of those directly affected. The three-channel video installation Natur Mord (2023) juxtaposes visuals of Afghan migrants displaced by war with field recordings of burning trees felled by wildfires. Through these images the work grapples with the aesthetics of catastrophe through the lens of anthropogenic climate change and ecological decay.
The video installation Wonderland (2016) is centred on the story of a 13-year-old Syrian refugee Muhammed, who fled his homeland with his family after Islamic State attacks in 2014 to arrive in southeastern Turkey. The boy is hearing-impaired and his mediated expressions ask the viewer to visualise another human being’s lived horror in the
absence of explicit, conventionally disseminated information.