The Hope Painting

Ayse U Akarca is a scientist and painter, based in London where she balances making art with her career in research at one of the world’s leading laboratories at UCL. Over recent years, Ayse has been working on numerous research projects on cancer, and her amazing discoveries not only led to her first scientific publication but also creations of her artworks. As Ayse has progressed with her scientific discoveries, she has become a pioneer in one particular immunohistochemistry technique, and as such her research and collaborations with other European research groups has grown even wider. With the evolution of Ayse’s scientific work came a range of emotions, thoughts and messages that she has continued to capture in her art. Working with different cancer tissues, faced with the reality of what this disease is and the effect it has on people’s lives, Ayse is constantly made to think about mortality – and the fine line that exists between life and death. Her paintings are inspired by actual patient tumour samples and also tell the story of her own emotions while working with these samples in the laboratory. By using different painting techniques and unconventional tools, she channels these sentiments onto the canvas, with the hope that it sparks an emotion and curiosity in the mind of the viewer. Ayse’s main aim with her painting is to push the boundaries and fuse the worlds of science and art, in order to bring life to the reality of disease and pain. Engaged in the communities of both art and science, she believes strongly that working in a cross-disciplinary environment can open up and broaden perspectives, encouraging audiences in both fields.