Ilknur Kocer, born in 1988 as the daughter of a Turkish guest worker family, grew up near Kassel. She completed her studies in Visual Communication with a focus on comics and illustration at the Kunsthochschule Kassel. As part of her studies, she spent the 2013/14 academic year as an Erasmus student with Judith Vanistendael at the Sint-Lucas University in Brussels.
She is a member of the artist collective "Die Goldenen Discofaust", which formed during her studies and has since realized several projects. Most recently, they participated in the touring exhibition "Vorbilder*innen", where they presented their work.
In her works, she writes and illustrates stories about cultural interferences, frequently engaging with themes of migration, racism, and feminism.
For the district of Göttingen, she created the comic book "Du nix verstehen?!" in 2020. An comic book about the experiences of migrants.
Together with the German National Library, she adapted the biography of Lina Liese Carlebach (later Lee Edwards) into a comic. This comic biography was exhibited at the German National Library from September 2021 to May 2022 and later published in an anthology by Wallstein Verlag.
Currently, Kocer is working on a comic with the working title "Tulpenförmiges Glas". In this project, she interweaves the memories and experiences of her family, who came to Germany as guest workers under the recruitment agreement between Germany and Turkey in the 1960s, into a historical context. The project has been supported by the Lion-Feuchtwanger Scholarship and received assistance from VG Bild-Kunst.
She is a member of the Comic Union.