Hande Karahanoğlu was born in 1977 in Istanbul.
After graduating from Robert College, an American high school in Turkey, HK went on to receive her bachelor’s degrees at Lehigh University in the fields of Architecture and Music. After completing her master’s degree in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, she returned to Turkey. In the following years, she worked on many large scale projects and competitions at Umut İnan Architecture Studio, including the İzmir Ontur Hotel which won a Chamber of Architects award. Between 2011 and 2013, she worked as an architect and project manager at Emre Arolat Architects, mainly on the projects of Prague Embassy, Maçka Hotel and İzmir Ege Perla.
HK, who continued her work in her own architecture office for a time, turned to writing and painting during the illnesses of her father and her cats. Davlumbaz was published in 2023, and 52 Southern Fools was published in 2025. She also has an unpublished poetry book titled Arizona, and is currently working on two more book projects.
As a painter, she has been searching through her paintings for the two imaginary childhood friends whom she cannot fully recall, also trying to reflect the relationship and interactions of these friends by using double canvases. Although these canvases are hatched and developed together, they can be separated according to the wishes of the artist or the buyers, and later in their lives they might reunite or not. Here, rather than a sad affair for the artist, there is a curiosity to follow fate in the character of an ‘infinite player’.