Aya Shalkar is an independent artist and graphic designer born and raised in Almaty, Kazakhstan. At the age of 17, she left her home country to study Arts & Design at the University of Strasbourg in France, where she spent 2 years before eventually moving to Vienna, Austria. In 2020, she graduated from the University of Applied Arts Vienna as MA in Graphic Design. She is fluent in 4 languages: Kazakh, Russian, English and French.

Aya became known for her creative projects on Instagram and uses her platform for art and self-expression. Ever since 2012, she is a young advocate for feminism in Central Asia, as a significant part of her works fall into this area of discussion.

Modelling and acting experience has led Aya into establishing a way of using her body and image in her own artistic projects, so she often performs in them herself. Her visual language is greatly influenced by her graphic design background, as digital graphics, photography, typography and other media are often combined in her work. Her style of storytelling is often metaphorical and multi-layered: always involving deep underlying research with a couple of witty twists along the way.

In February 2021, Shalkar has launched studio oneki, a multidisciplinary art & design studio based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Studio oneki’s practice is built on experimental and heritage based research. It looks for new and unseen in the old and forgotten. With its many upcoming projects and collaborations studio oneki is building a new identity of contemporary art and design of Central Asia.