Murat Yildirim, Art Director and Creative Illustrator from Turkey. Photography © Murat Yildirim

1.In your opinion what is the role of a museum?

Museums help people to question the relationship between them by realizing the works of civilizations and to realize those values. This brings the museums together with the branches of science. Museums serving science and art are institutions with universal values.

2.What are your favorite museums in the world? Why?

Among my favorite museums, Vatican Museums is my first favorite. This is the biggest museum in the world, but the most famous works of the Renaissance period, Michelangelo, is located in this museum. I call Italy the heart of art because I think that the Renaissance period is a period that will shed light on every artist, every designer in terms of traditional art history.

The Rijksmuseum museum is also among my favorite museums, respectively. Many works belonging to the golden age of the Netherlands are exhibited in this museum. Rembrandt’s most famous painting, The Night Watch, is located here, and I think it’s a work that everyone should see. In my opinion, it is hard to find light and shadow mastery in this painting in other works.

3.How important are social networks in your business? And which platform do you prefer and why.

I share my work in just two places. The first is Behance, the second is Instagram. Behance is completely a portfolio, but it is a platform with the best artists in the world, so it is a place that both nourishes you and opens you a job opportunity. Instagram is an ideal place to share some more casual and popular content.

The work done on Instagram maybe consumed in 1 day. This is a bit annoying, but years of work on sites like Behance can be remembered. Apart from these two media, I do not have my own website, because those who want to reach me or do business can contact me via e-mail by seeing the work I do on these two pages. So I don’t think the website is practical for an artist.

4.In particular, due to the coronavirus emergency, how have you changed your business on social networks?

Covid affected everyone’s lives, positively or negatively. Maybe it will sound funny, but the quarantine period had the opportunity to produce endless work. Without changing my workflow, I became internalized by focusing more on just what I did, and at the end of the day I made people see it when they had free time.

My serial works, Furry Artworks, spread all over the world. I think I owe this interview to those works and quarantine because all that an artist needs is too much time.

5.To create greater engagement among museums, artists and professionals, do you have any advice for cultural projects such as #MuseumWeek?

#MuseumWeek is a great museum both digitally and traditionally for me. It shouldn’t be so easy to keep two different categories together. But he does it best. To advise MuseumWeek. Perhaps it may be a frequent workshop that gathers artists from all over the world and everyone can learn from each other.

Interview by Fabio Pariante, journalist

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Murat Yildirim on social networks: Instagram – Behance – Twitter

Murat Yildirim is an Art Director and Creative Illustrator from Istanbul, Turkey, he creates original and surreal 3D works, halfway between poetry and illusion. In his works he uses objects and forms that interact in the scene represented, sometimes in the absence of gravity and living in surreal environments with animals and natural elements.

Among the latest works, with different materials, Yilidirm has created the fun series “Furry Artworks”, in which he reinterprets some classic paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Salvador Dalì, Leonardo Da Vinci and others, using fur of different colors.