Merve Tuna (Eskişehir, 1984) completed her BSc at Istanbul Technical University Product Design Department in 2006, and her MA in Womenswear Fashion Design and Technology Department at London College of Fashion in 2010.
Tuna’s work is object-oriented and narrative-based centering around the concepts that relate to the body. Situated at the confluence of psychoanalysis, mathematics, and film, her artistic process oscillates between rigorous formulation and material-based instinctive making. She explores how the concepts of trauma, pain, shame and power relations are embodied and manifested in objects, the tactile parallels between craft processes and psychosexuality, and the insights subject-object relations can provide into the human psyche.
She co-founded object*oriented*magic with Ayşenaz Toker in 2020, designing rituals with everyday objects based on Anatolian Folklore and psychomagic, and participated in the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial: Critical Cooking Show (2020) and Arquiteturas Film Festival (Porto, 2022).
Tuna’s first solo show, The Case of O: Scenes, Formulations, Derivations, took place in 2022 in Küçük Mustafa Paşa Hammam. Her group shows include Sommer Festival, Kulturakademie Tarabya, Istanbul (2023); Seduction, Ferda Art Platform, Istanbul (2022); Venus in Furs, Martch Art Project, Istanbul (2019); SALON Istanbul, Amsterdam Museum, Amsterdam (2012); MA Human, Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2010). Her short film Subliminal Anatomy of a Latex Coat (2016) was screened in international film festivals, including Istanbul Experimental Film Festival (2019), Porn Film Festival, Berlin (2019) and !f Istanbul Independent Film Festival (2017).
Merve Tuna lives and works in Istanbul.