Kerim Safa (Turkish, b. 1985) is a visual artist and musician who makes hand-drawn pixel animations and audiovisual works rooted in the aesthetics of early computer graphics and video games. Working between algorithmic processes and labour-intensive, frame-by-frame animation, he builds looping, meditative systems where mechanical repetition and subtle variation coexist.
Safa studied fine arts at Dokuz Eylul University in Izmir before earning a scholarship to study music composition at Istanbul Bilgi University. That dual training continues to shape his work: concepts such as polyrhythm and phase shifting inform how his visual systems unfold over time, and he sometimes builds audiovisual pieces or performs live alongside other musicians. He moved to the Netherlands and began releasing his animations as NFTs in 2020. For a 2021 illustration commissioned by Noema Magazine on the theme of digital waste, he manually added and removed pixels over some 200 exports until the finished image measured exactly 1,380,512 bytes, the number stated within the artwork itself.
