Elif Gürbüz

Elif Gürbüz London-based independent abstract artist I’m an abstract artist working in visual media; specifically drawing, painting, collage and visual poetry.

My work tackles psychological, spiritual and esoteric subject matters and is, therefore, a documentation of the particulars of my inner world. Through art, I wish to serve as a mirror that reflects one’s own creativity and shadow selves — since “in the particular lies the universal”. Drawing like a child. Apart from being an artist, I’m also a designer and an art director, working with visual cult

ure a lot of the time. As a designer, I strongly rely on critical thinking; to strip down ideas to their core, edit, refine and do work that’s grounded. Paradoxically, this cognitive strength tames my creative instinct, and a violent inner war takes place between the constructive voice of my creativity and the destructive voice of my logic. Balance is ideal, but most days criticism wins over. And the remedy had to be amateurism. That’s the story of how I started making art, and I haven't drawn anything since when I was very little. That's probably why I still draw like a child. I embrace an innocent inability for perfection that’s offering me freedom and non-judgement. My process is very intuitive and improvised, like a performance. I draw automatically while playing with visual sensations and movement, which often leads to an abstract vocabulary and simple grammar. I nurture my child-like drawing skills and go inward for my subjects. I’m inspired by my inner world; my emotions, thoughts, shadow, dreams, obsessions and imagination. I’m truly committing to a radical subjectivity so that my art reflects pure intimacy and honesty into my ever-changing self. As an artist, drawing is an exciting tool for self-discovery, one which serves as a mirror to self. The more I practice, the more my inner child becomes freer, stronger and more resilient. And consequently, I’m becoming a stronger designer, thanks to my art.

May moodboard
01/06/2026

May moodboard

April moodboard
01/05/2026

April moodboard

I am here
08/04/2026

I am here

I am here
08/04/2026

I am here

March moodboard
02/04/2026

March moodboard

Design Machines is a no-code workshop where I teach the principles of rule-based and generative design. During the works...
24/03/2026

Design Machines is a no-code workshop where I teach the principles of rule-based and generative design. During the workshop, I ask students to write simple, natural language rules that can generate simple drawings.

I taught this workshop at Central Saint Martins and the Pratt Institute between 2022 and 2023. But here are a few Design Machines that I created, each presented with its rule set and sample outcomes. I find this a fun exercise to test the creative limits of simple design algorithms, especially when driven by randomness.

01/03/2026
One from the archives; . An online archive of the movement that documented the online presence of the Occupy movement...
23/02/2026

One from the archives; . An online archive of the movement that documented the online presence of the Occupy movement as a critique of social media activism. The outcome of the project is a Twitter archive of Occupy during some of the local protests, clustered around symbolic spaces of satellite protests.

was the culmination of my studies at from over a decade ago. It embodies the spirit of exploration and adaptation, as well as hands-dirty programming, echoing the core principles of the Occupy movement itself. This project bridged the gap between the digital and physical, the academic and the public, and in doing so, contributed to a broader conversation about the evolving landscape of activism in the digital age.

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London

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+447835290305

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