Handan Uslu-Desachy

Handan Uslu-Desachy is an artist and teacher based in Paris, whose work centres on realist figure and portrait drawing. She teaches classical realism not as a style but as a method-centred system: seeing, measuring, analysing and building the form step by step.

She began drawing and painting in the European atelier method in 2019 at The Drawing School in Dublin. In 2024–2025 she trained in Porto at AARP — Atelier de Arte Realista do Porto under Daniel Gamelas and André Soares. She has also studied with artists including Ivan Loginov and Gustavo Ramos, and has run international training programmes with the Portuguese artist Afonso Lardosa.

Alongside drawing and painting she has worked in photography, film and documentary. Her architectural photography received an Honorable Mention at the 2016 IPP Photography Awards. The film she directed was supported in 2023 by the European Union’s Sivil Düşün programme, and her interdisciplinary work by the Impact Hub Istanbul Project Zoom grant. That experience feeds the observation, composition and visual storytelling in her drawing practice.

A double-major graduate in Mechanical Engineering and Economics from Koç University, she holds a master’s degree in Communication, Culture and Technology from Georgetown University. In Washington DC she served as Executive Director of the Turkish American Scientists and Scholars Association and received the Young Achiever Award from the American Turkish Association of Washington DC.

At Google she led Trust & Safety work for Türkiye, covering AI ethics, content moderation and algorithmic bias. That work led to her inclusion in 2025 among the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics.

The structural thinking she brings from engineering, her experience in visual storytelling and her methodical way of working shape both her own art and the way she teaches classical realism.