Doğan Özdemir- Fractured Self, United Relation
Known professionally as Miskin Kukla, Doğan Özdemir is a Turkish interdisciplinary visual artist and designer. His work encompasses photography, digital collage, illustration, and conceptual art. With over two decades of experience as a graphic designer, art director, and creative director, he combines a strong design sensibility with poetic experimentation.
Özdemir’s art explores themes of identity, memory, and transformation, tracing forgotten narratives through abandoned spaces and cultural mythologies. He graduated from the Graphic Design Department at Dokuz Eylul University in İzmir in 2005. Özdemir treats photography and digital media as raw materials, cutting, layering, and reassembling them to reflect the fragmented and surreal nature of perception.
His recurring hybrid figures—part human, part creature—create narrative portals where instinct intersects with society, and the grotesque coexist with empathy. We spoke with Doğan to learn more about his work.
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Thank you for taking the time to speak with Occhi. What was the earliest moment that made you treat images as materials to cut and reassemble rather than as finished truths?
I’ve never fully believed that photography offers absolute truths. An image can be contradictory; it can feel like an optical illusion, evoking a completely different feeling than the one it depicts. This has always proven to me that photography is an elastic thing, a material that can be bent, cut, and recombined. The act of combining multiple images to create new identities and narratives has fascinated me from the very beginning. I first discovered this in the late 1980s, when I cut up posters from Blue Jean magazine and reassembled them into strange hybrids. Oddly, I also enjoyed collaging medicine boxes, as if packaging and posters could create entirely different worlds.
Which early teacher or creative director shaped your eye—and what part of their guidance did you later have to dismantle to find your own language?
When I was five or six, a kindergarten teacher with a deep understanding of visual arts encouraged me to explore creativity. These two years laid the foundation for my early exposure to visual expression. She would create collages using pasta and newspaper clippings, inspiring my own experiments. Later, at university, I completed two years of foundational art classes, which challenged me to refine my approach and discover my own visual language. At the same time, I began experimenting with photography, capturing objects and human figures, and soon incorporated these images into my collage projects. As an expressionist, I always approach my work with a central idea in mind, ensuring that my photo collages and illustrations maintain a strong conceptual focus.
With two decades in design and art direction, where does professional polish help your art—and where does it risk suffocating it?
My twenty years in graphic design and art direction have taught me a lot, and sometimes reminded me that perfection isn’t always the goal. Professional polish can elevate a piece, refining color, composition, typography, and technical execution. Yet in advertising, I’ve often seen too much polish turn work into a factory product, suppressing spontaneity and creativity, and giving visuals an almost “robotic” feel. Occasionally, raw talent still outshines trained skill—and that’s something I like to keep in mind. For this reason, I aim for a delicate balance, letting professionalism enhance my work without silencing the impulsive, human spark that gives it life.
Your half‑human, half‑creature figures hold both grotesque and compassionate impulses. What part of yourself do they reveal that realism cannot?
My half-human, half-creature figures embody both grotesque and compassionate impulses, reflecting the contradictions inherent in all of us. Realism captures only the surface, the visible form; however, these hybrid figures reveal inner conflicts, vulnerabilities, and emotional tensions that traditional depiction fails to capture. Through them, I explore the simultaneous fragility and power of human experience, bringing to life emotions that words or realistic images alone would struggle to convey; after all, only a human could attempt to capture the emotions of a fly galloping across a field like a horse.
Memory as collage: When do you let the seam lines show—the cuts, scars, and stitches—and when do you erase them? What ethics guide that choice?
When working with memory as a collage, I sometimes allow the cuts, scars, and stitches to remain visible—they are echoes of the past, layers of time that leave a subtle vibration upon the viewer. At other times, I soften or erase these marks, creating spaces where the audience can weave in their own dreams, their own memories, and in a sense, discover their own art. The interplay of hardness and softness sets the rhythm of each stitch and sharp line; I leave room for silent, poetic breaths as much as for emotional intensity. Ethically, I navigate with transparency and respect for the viewer: conveying feelings honestly without imposing or directing, while allowing them to find their own journey within the work.
Digital culture rewards speed and spectacle. What criteria must a work meet, in your view, to deserve attention beyond the scroll?
Digital culture rewards speed and spectacle, which is why most work is consumed in an instant. For a piece to deserve attention beyond the scroll, I believe it must meet a few criteria: it should be original and striking, evoking emotion or thought in the viewer. It should offer visual or conceptual surprises, creating a connection that lingers beyond the fleeting scroll. Above all, it should invite the viewer to return again and again—much like a book that calls you back to read its pages over and over.
You treat photography as raw material. What rule of photography or design do you routinely break on purpose, and why does that rupture matter?
Photography is raw material to me; figures, objects, light, and color are merely tools. Traditional rules? Perspective, background, setting, even seams that “should” be invisible… I often ignore them. My collages rarely have a defined ground or space; figures float in their own weightless worlds, allowing me to play with the logic of time and space. Yet within this chaos, I position the composition as if it were a single, cohesive figure—strange, yet strangely familiar—evoking that sense of “seen for the first time, yet already known” in the viewer. Cuts, scars, and contrasting colors are deliberate collisions, sparking small shocks and curiosity. Breaking rules grants me the freedom to conjure new realities, emotions, and surprises—because sometimes reality is shaped not by rules, but by imagination.
Let’s explore the direction of your practice: As you push poetic experimentation and conceptual narrative, what constraint or risk are you imposing on your next body of work to force an evolution?
In my next body of work, I impose a conscious constraint and risk: through figures and collages, I aim to abstract the narrative entirely, confronting the viewer not with familiar images but with surprising and unexpected experiences. This risk challenges me both technically and conceptually; mistakes and unforeseen outcomes become opportunities for new ideas to emerge. In doing so, I create a space that fosters the evolution of my practice, pushing beyond conventional forms. Of course, this is a process I must live through in my art—like a flea accustomed to jumping inside the same jar. But what if it leaps out?
From Oripeau to digital exhibitions, what is one thing a viewer or collaborator taught you that changed how you build images?
One piece of feedback from a viewer or collaborator struck me deeply: my works were received openly, without question, which genuinely surprised me. It sparked curiosity—because the viewer sought no explanation or background, simply experiencing the pieces as they were. This encounter has cast a bright light on the works I create for public spaces, teaching me the value of touching the viewer and letting them wander through the experience on their own terms. It also reminded me to consider the foundations of my stories more carefully, especially for works displayed publicly. I suppose this is where my advertising instincts sneak in, quietly helping the imagination along.
With London Design Festival, Lumen’s “The Impossibles,” and new features ahead, what failure would be most useful to you right now—and what success would be most dangerous?
Right now, the most useful failure would be my works being “misunderstood” in unexpected ways by viewers, no matter where they are exhibited. A genuine misunderstanding often sparks new paths, fresh perspectives, and ideas that push boundaries. Conversely, the most dangerous success would be giving exactly what everyone expects—comfortable, predictable, and fully controlled. Such success could trap me in a comfort zone and overshadow surprises and risks. I wouldn’t want that kind of reward. It’s like trying to control every light in a cave full of bats at night: it looks perfect, but it blocks discovery.
For further information on the artist, please visit the following link
Featured works
Fractured Self, United Relation
This work visualizes the complexity and fragility of individual identity. The faces and hands come together like a mosaic of disparate emotions and experiences, emphasizing that our identity is not a fixed structure but a dynamic process in constant motion and relation. The piece alludes to Glissant’s Poetics of Relation, suggesting that artistic resistance against oppression and fear can only be achieved through the convergence of fractured selves.
Legacy of the Desert
“Legacy of the Desert” invites the viewer to reflect on the layers of history that have been built, forgotten, and obscured over the ages. Through the surreal fusion of a camel’s head and a grand, decaying architectural structure, the artwork represents the balance between nature and man-made creations, the transient nature of memory, and the eerie permanence of past events. This piece explores the notion of how the past, like an ancient building intertwined with a living creature, continues to exist within the present — hidden, yet always present. The juxtaposition of the camel, a symbol of endurance, with the deteriorating structure evokes the haunting specter of what is left behind.
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