Mgr Nalan Avhan was born in Turkey where she spent her youth. She received her doctorate at the University of Rzeszów in Poland. Currently, she is a researcher at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, where her research topics include: Turkish-Polish relations in the nineteenth century, Poles in Turkey, Turkish handicrafts, photography,  Turkish cinema , and Turkish folk music. Since 1982, she has worked as a Turkish translator for private companies, border guards, police and the court.

From 2004-2010 she worked as manager for the Department of Ethnography at the National Museum of  Przemyśl. In this position, she prepared and organized many exhibitions and museum events, participated in conferences. She is also the author of numerous publications related to Turkey and beyond.

Since 2010, with some breaks, Nalan Avhan focused on water painting with an Ebru technique, which she does with great passion and enthusiasm. She admits that once started with Ebru one cannot stop  because it is so wonderful and intriguing. Nalan loves her passion and treats it as a kind of meditation, a detachment from everyday life, and a chance to be in her own wonderful world.

Art Ebru is a very old method of painting consisting of corresponding application of paint on the surface of the water, prepared in a suitable vessel, and combined with a thickening substance. Then the finished pattern is transferred to the appropriate paper for water-based paints. It is a laborious painting technique and you never know exactly how the finished piece will look. All ingredients are natural, and therefore works of art created by Ebru retain their texture and colors for hundreds of years.