Photo: Ada Diren Kurt

Efkan (1990, Kassel), Oemer (1993, Kassel) are an artist-duo based in Germany

Efkan & Oemer explore contemporary culture through a practice shaped by clarity, structure and material presence. Working as a sibling duo, they translate what they see in their surroundings and street-influenced aesthetics into a distinct visual language. Rather than following a fixed path, their work developed over time through a shared interest in creativity and a desire to express how culture appears visually.

Ideas often mark the starting point of their process. At the same time, they keep an open approach, allowing each work to shift during its development. Their use of mixed media combining acrylic, spray paint, lacquer, markers, drawing and objects allows them to build layers that a single medium could not achieve.

Typography plays an important role in their work. For the duo, typographic gestures act as personal markers, as individual as handwriting and as specific as a fingerprint. By looking at how letters function as form and structure, they challenge common ideas of readability and meaning, treating text as a visual element rather than just a carrier of information.

Skate culture appears in their practice not as a motif, but through the materials themselves. Used skateboard decks, marked by movement and impact, are approached as records of lived experience. These surfaces bring questions of use, value and cultural memory into the work.

Through this approach, Efkan & Oemer develop a visual language that moves away from polished aesthetics and instead focuses on what feels real: the worn, the direct and the unrefined.