Merve Atılgan

Istanbul-based multidisciplinary artist, illustrator, and dancer. She graduated top of her class from the Department of Cartoon and Animation at Maltepe University’s Faculty of Fine Arts and received classical ballet training from the Royal Academy of Dance. Her artistic practice is inspired by personal experiences, solo travels, and research into shamanic traditions and cultures, folk narratives, and archetypal symbolism. Working with a visual language that spans from botanical forms to sacred geometry, she explores the aesthetic structures of various ecosystems and underwater worlds. Her ballet background informs the dreamlike, translucent figures she creates, which visualize physical traumas and processes of healing embedded in body memory.

 In 2017, her illustrations and character designs for the Akbank Jazz Festival project "Jazz from Films" won the Bronze Stevie Award in the "Best Use of Instagram" category. That same year, she received an award at the Cheltenham Illustration Awards in the UK for her work on "The Masked Adult Museum." Atılgan has created illustrations for numerous children's books published worldwide and in Turkey, earning accolades along the way. Her illustrated book "Deep Forest," of which she is both the author and illustrator, published by Can Çocuk, was selected for Illustrofest in Serbia, exhibited in Belgrade, and subsequently showcased at the Shanghai Children's Book Fair after being nominated as a finalist for the "Shanghai Golden Pinwheel Young Illustrators" awards. Atılgan conducts her productions and personal works for domestic and international publishers, magazines, and exhibitions in her studio.