Şebnem Kayhan (b. 1989) is an interdisciplinary artist who approaches drawing not as a tool of representation, but as a practice for reading, thinking, and transforming space.

Her background in urban planning and urban design forms the conceptual foundation of her work. Through a fluid interplay between urban sketching, illustration, and spatial research, she reveals relationships that often remain invisible within everyday life. In her practice, drawing is not an aesthetic outcome, but a mode of thinking—one that sharpens perception, records time, and reconstructs space.

​

Her participation in international workshops, applied research programs, and interdisciplinary production processes across Turkey and Europe has allowed this approach to be tested and expanded across different geographies. Her projects, developed around themes such as public space, collective memory, fragility, and spatial empathy, establish a deliberate connection between local experience and global discourse.

​

Under the framework of Eyes Open Ubuntu, her work explores the relationship between the human body and environment through invisible connections that extend from the micro to the macro scale. The project transforms empathy, solidarity, and collective memory into a field of visual research.

​

Through a hybrid language combining acrylic and watercolor painting, digital illustration, and three-dimensional modeling, she makes these collective structures visible as both emotional and spatial layers. The retrospective dimension of the project was presented within the context of Good Design İzmir 2025, reconfigured as an evolving archive of perception over time.

​

Kayhan positions art and strategy not as opposing forces, but as interwoven fields. As a co-founder of RunArte Creative Agency, she constructs visual language as an architecture of meaning, while her Urban Sketching courses at Istanbul Technical University frame drawing as a practice of courage and spatial awareness for younger generations.