I moved from Istanbul to Frankfurt around eight years ago, which is where I started my career as a designer in Germany. I then moved back to Istanbul, then left and moved to Amsterdam, and then three years ago I moved to Berlin.

The biggest motivation for me living in Berlin is that I can be myself. It has been a liberating experience for me. But, being from Turkey, my motivation for moving wasn’t so much, ‘I want to go and live in another culture and be inspired,’ but, ‘I need a good country to live in as a creative person.’ In Turkey, I feel like I can’t fit in culturally. It’s growing very conservative, with a low quality of life, bad traffic, journalists are in prison and there is no freedom of speech. I left Istanbul and first moved to Frankfurt, then Amsterdam. I was trying to find a city I can build my future in.

I have a love-love relationship with Berlin. I’m really in love with the city.

Berlin has more chaos in it than, say, Oslo or Hamburg, which have a super high quality of life, but that would be boring for me, because I feed my creativity with chaos and problems. In my art, I try to use humor to deal with problems. I’ve realised that when I’m in love and happy I don’t create as much! I’ve often thought that in England, so much great music has come out of the country because the weather was so gloomy.

I get asked a lot of questions in Berlin about being Turkish, and while there is no bad intention behind people asking kind of cliché questions, I decided to have some fun with this experience of mine. I like to play with clichés with humor. When I lived in Amsterdam, I also got asked once, ‘Does Turkey have a sea?’

The quality of life in Germany and Berlin is amazing, but Berlin is also chaotic, rough and punk, which is what I like about it. There’s not a classical beauty that you find in cities like Amsterdam or Venice. Berlin has a lot of contradictions. There is a saying that Berlin is not beautiful but sexy. I am also full of contradictions, so I feel like the perfect fit in Berlin!

As an artist, I think a general feeling is often that you don’t fit in — you don’t fit in a conventional friends group, your family, city or country, you often feel that you’re an alien. But Berlin is a city where you feel that, even as an alien, it is your city. You never feel like a stranger in Berlin. If you want to walk around naked, it’s okay. If you wear an astronaut costume, it’s really okay in Berlin —  no one will judge you! So this is like heaven for us. Whatever you do or want to be, I feel the city welcomes you. Berlin is a city for aliens.

My friends were creating a group show, and it was called Mountains. I thought, ‘How boring, what can I do with that?’ I’m not really a big hiking or nature person, so I don’t have any big story about mountains. And this is what ended up being the inspiration for the artwork and series. It is one of my favorite artworks in recent years.

For my mental health, it’s been nice being at home during COVID-19, but because my art is based on stress and problems, I need that. I can’t really create stuff having a super peaceful day at home. It doesn’t work on me like that. I’m not so much someone that finds inspiration in museums, but more by real-life problems and experiences. Also by good conversations with friends, when you can discuss some deep stuff, and sometimes by comedy too. 

I work as Head of Design at Heimat in Berlin, and also create my own art and exhibitions. Two years ago, I opened my second solo show in Hamburg. The team at Heimat are really respectful and understanding of my art and collaborations with different brands, and helping me with that balance. During COVID-19 I’ve had a little more time while working from home, but I can’t actually say I’ve produced more artwork as a result. I find that being stressed and having limited time, I actually get more creative.

It’s not easy moving to another country, and not something I would recommend to everyone, to be honest. Moving to Germany I had a lot of official documents and visas, papers written in German, which was a challenge for me, not speaking German.

Galleries: König Gallery, Boros Collection and C/O Berlin.

Art supply store: Modulor. Heaven for artists, a huuuuuge art supply store. I always tell my friends visiting that they have to go there. It has anything you can imagine to create something.

Design stores: Andreas Murkudis and Voo Store.

For dinner: Paris Bar, Borchardt, Lutter & Wegner, and Mädchenitaliener.

For breakfast : Café Fleury and Daluma. 

A walk from Mitte to Kreuzberg, and Museum Island is super beautiful.

When I first moved to Berlin, I was just listening to 80s pop. And you know The Stranglers? I was listening to their track ‘Strange Little Girl’: ‘Strange little girl, where are you going?’ The Stranglers are British, of course, but this song feels so much like Berlin to me. Berlin could have been a strange little girl itself when I first arrived. 

Window. I like to have my own space and also take pictures from the window — I need to do something.