opening: September 1, Tuesday, 6:00 PM

Every artist tries to transform their own reality into another reality - that is, into a work of art.
– Mustafa Horasan

We Came to Be Human brings together in Sofia the intersecting artistic paths of Mustafa Horasan and Husein Işık, shaped by friendship, shared memory, and the responsibility of being human. Developed between Istanbul and Vienna, this encounter brings together the works of two artists shaped by the same artistic education, the difficult historical experiences of their era, and a shared sensibility.

Following Horasan’s tragic death during the preparation of the exhibition, the project also takes on the powerful character of a tribute, keeping his memory alive. Focusing on human vulnerability, resilience, the search for goodness, and the invisible bonds we forge with others, the exhibition confronts the viewer not only with works of art, but also with the ethical and emotional depth of what it means to remain human.

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It is very difficult to encounter a Horasan painting for the first time without it remaining in
one’s mind.
– Didem Elif

The artist Hüseyin Işık turns the exhibition of his work into a witty exploration of the themes
of borders, minorities, discrimination, and violence.
– Gabriel Rath – Die Presse, “La République, c’est moi!”, 27 November 2023

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Exhibition team:
Krasimir Linkov – curator, art historian, Director of the City Art Gallery – Plovdiv
Milena Kitipova – exhibition design, assistant curator
Hüseyin Işık – texts and spatial planning
Mustafa Horasan and Hüseyin Işık – photographs of the artworks
Team of the Union of Bulgarian Artists

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The exhibition is part of the Union of Bulgarian Artists’ project Projections of Creativity 3, implemented with the support of the National Culture Fund. The exhibition is supported also by Austrian Cultural Forum – Sofia.

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About the artists

Mustafa Horasan (b. 1965, Aydın, Turkey) was an artist who graduated from the Departments of Graphic Design and Original Graphic Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Marmara University in Istanbul. In his practice, he explored the complex relationships between humans, nature, and culture, as well as themes such as violence, war, power, identity, and the vulnerability of the human body. His works reveal the profound and often contradictory connections that people establish with other living beings, questioning the boundaries between civilization and instinct, beauty and cruelty, nature and culture.
Horasan drew on a diverse range of visual sources, including his own photographs, images from books on natural history and medicine, archives, and albums of war photography. Like an anthropologist and archaeologist, he collected and juxtaposed images and traces from different times and places in order to create new meanings and rethink history and the human experience. In his works, familiar images often become strange, ambiguous, and unsettling visual situations in which the personal and the collective, the past and the present, intertwine. Since the early 1990s, Horasan had maintained an active exhibition career in Turkey and abroad. His significant solo exhibitions included Night Garden (2003), Invasion (2005), Control Room (2007), Owning (2008), If You Kill the Devil Inside Me, You Kill the Angel Too and Clash (2010), Labyrinth (2012), When the Time Comes (2014) in London, Face is Everything (2016), Bum Spider (2018), Hare and Hounds! (2019/2020), About Anger, Justice and Serenity (2021/2022), Üryan Geldim Gene and Ne Dem Baki Ne Gam Baki (2022), as well as Up And Down (2023) in Ghent, Belgium.
Horasan participated in numerous major international exhibitions, art fairs, and biennials, including the 4th Sharjah International Biennial (1999), the International Biennial of Contemporary Painting of the Islamic World in Tehran (2005–2006), and NordArt 2023 in Germany. His works have been presented at Istanbul Modern, the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, The Armory Show in New York, Art Dubai, Art Basel/Scope Basel, the Marrakech Art Fair, and other international platforms. His work occupies an important place in the contemporary Turkish art scene and has been represented in numerous museum and institutional collections. The artist died in an accident in 2026 while preparing for this exhibition.

Hüseyin Işık is an artist, cartoonist, illustrator, comic-book author, and interdisciplinary artist whose practice unfolds between Turkey and Austria. He was born in the early 1960s in a small Kurdish village and spent his childhood in Istanbul. He began drawing at an early age, with his first creative efforts rooted in public space and everyday life. In 1975, his first story was published, followed by his first cartoon in 1976. He subsequently worked as a cartoonist and illustrator for various newspapers and magazines, including during a period of political repression and censorship in Turkey.
Işık studied graphic arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Marmara University. In 1984, he participated in a travelling exhibition against the death penalty - an example of socially engaged art whose historical objective was ultimately realized years later with the abolition of the death penalty in Turkey. In 1988, he settled in Vienna, where he gradually developed a substantial artistic practice addressing themes such as identity, migration, racism, otherness, human rights, and borders.
Since the mid-1990s, he has regularly presented his work through exhibitions, installations, performances, and interventions in galleries, museums, and public spaces. His artistic language often incorporates humour, provocation, and absurdity, transforming everyday situations and urban spaces into stages for critically engaging with social and political realities. Among his significant projects are Photo ID for Foreigners, Borderless, The Wild Heart, Chat-Room, Live Broadcast from My Coffin, Fantasy and Reality, and Republic of Hüseyin. In 2009, he participated in the 53rd International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. His solo exhibitions have been presented in Austria, Turkey, France, and Bulgaria, including at the City Art Gallery in Plovdiv with the project Live Broadcast from My Coffin. In recent years, he has realized the exhibitions Blue Is My Red Room (2024), War and Peace (2024), and İzler ve Büyükdere (2025).
Hüseyin Işık has lived and worked in Friedrichshof, Burgenland, since 2003. Alongside his artistic practice, he conducts workshops and seminars focusing on art and creativity. His work is characterized by a constant movement between personal experience and collective memory, between individual history and the broader themes of contemporary life.