E  m  m  a       V  a  k  a  r  e  l  o  v  a

Born 1988,  in Sofia, Bulgaria. Lives and works in Bordeaux.

At the age of 12, she held her first exhibition "Emmaange," for which she claims to have collaborated with her parrot Angel. Since the age of two, she began sketching her first lines while seated in a sled in the middle of her room, perched on the seventh floor of a tower in Sofia, a relic from the communist era.
After attending the Ilia Petrov National High School of Fine Arts, specializing in sculpture, she set off for Paris at the age of eighteen to immerse herself in illustration at the Estienne School.

Throughout her studies, she brought to life her first album, "Snowdrop," written by Maria Aglikina and later published by Dadoclem (France) and Forum (Russia), an initiatory journey and ode to spring and youth. 

Her artistic journey then took her to Brussels in 2010, where she obtained her diploma in illustration from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. It was there that the idea for her next album, "Bazaar," germinated, which would later be titled "A Day Near Sofia," a captivating visual narrative exploring the wanderings of various characters, from the small village to the big city. During this period, she gave life to the series of paintings "Autumn for Beginners," delving into the dreams of leaves before their autumnal fall, a series that would later be rewarded by the CJ Picture Book Festival in Korea and exhibited in numerous international illustration festivals.
Turning to new horizons, she immersed herself in the world of comics at the European School of Higher Education in Image in Angoulême, and explored the intricacies of animation at La Poudrière in Valence. Despite these new explorations, she never abandoned her first passion, painting, participating in various exhibitions in Bulgaria, England, Japan, among others.

In 2014, she was the winner of the 2nd season of "En Sortant De l'Ecole" a television series based on poems, broadcast on France 3 and produced by Tant Mieux Prod. Her short film "I Have Dreamed of You So Much," inspired by the poem of Robert Desnos, was noticed in over fifty-two international festivals, receiving awards at the Japan Media Arts Festival (Tokyo) and the Golden Kouker Festival (Sofia, Bulgaria) among others. This film depicts the story of a man, Horizon, and his impossible love.
Today, she divides her time between making short films, painting projects, and illustrating books.