Ramazan Can

Ramazan Can was born in Manisa, Turkey, in 1988 and lives and works in Ankara. He makes sculptures and installations from carpets and rugs joined with concrete, neon tubes, wood and plexiglass. He also paints in oil on canvas, sometimes adding gold leaf or neon to the surface.

His family belongs to the Yörük, nomadic people of southern Anatolia. His work returns to the loss of that way of life through changes in farming, urban growth and Ottoman-era resettlement. Childhood memories of shamanist healing rituals also feed the work. The Issue of the Evil Eye (2019) combines neon with rugs. Indigenisation VII (2019) and The Pain of Existence (2021) pair carpet with concrete. In the painted Abdulcambaz series (2020) he invents a character to question the identities a person takes on in different settings.

Can studied fine arts education at Gazi University, graduating in 2011, and completed a graduate programme in painting at the university's Fine Arts Institute in 2015. He has shown with Anna Laudel since 2017, with solo exhibitions in Istanbul in 2018 and 2021. In 2019 he took part in Prospect at Sharjah Art Museum. In 2025 he held museum solo exhibitions at the Gustav-Lübcke-Museum in Hamm and at Villa Merkel in Esslingen. The Gustav-Lübcke-Museum holds his work in its collection.