Between dream and mysticism, Monika Malewska, a young Polish tattoo artist, develops a fascinating universe. Centred on nature and brought back in part from her psychedelic experiences, she shows it in the form of surrealist monochrome pieces. At just 30 years of age, she shows that she is already an artist with vast creative horizons fuelled, as this long interview shows, by a powerful creative energy.
Hello Monika, could you introduce yourself to all those who don't know you?
It's always a bit strange to talk about myself. Well, I am a dreamer with a constant need for growth and experience. I turned 30 last year, which made me surprisingly very happy. Currently I live in Katowice, Poland, but I am slowly stretching my wings before the next flight. I grew up in the east of the country before moving to the south once I got a job in a tattoo studio. I started tattooing in December 2014, in a flat I was living in at the time and continued for eight months. My life is changing a lot but I fully accept its dynamics. On a daily basis I try to be as grounded as possible to keep the eye of the storm calm.
Did you have an artistic education?
I graduated from the University of Technology with a degree in architecture and urban planning, a five-year adventure. I started tattooing in the last year after I made the crazy decision to become a tattoo artist and dedicate my whole life to it. My beginnings, however, were relatively ordinary. I was immediately fascinated by what I saw when I went with a friend to the tattoo shop. I found it extremely interesting and made my own appointment the same day. I had no idea what I was going to put on my skin, I just knew I wanted to come back.
So that first tattoo was your entry point into the world.
The tattoo world became my main interest. I was crazy about it. But it was at my first convention that I realised that this was what I wanted to do. I was excited by the amount of freedom in one place. Two years passed between that first tattoo and the time I started tattooing. I drew a lot, learned to think like a designer, which was new to me. At the time, seven years ago, I was living in the east of the country and realism was the popular style. There were only a few studios, maybe two or three, with people who knew what they were doing but very few artists producing their own original drawings. I already knew that I didn't want to just do anything. I wanted to tattoo my own designs. And to do that, I had to find a really good studio to work in. I didn't really care about the city, I knew I would move if I had to. My goal was clear, I just wanted to learn. That's how I ended up in Katowice, a city in Poland where the dotwork scene was strongest at the time and where there were a lot of great tattoo artists in and around the city. It turned out to be the right place for me. To grow as a tattoo artist but also as a person.
Stars, planets, cosmos, deities and supernatural forces make up your universe, which could be described as psychedelic. Would you agree?
I like to think of my art as a combination of dreaminess and mysticism rather than just psychedelic. The world of psychedelics, in the different forms it can be experienced, has however greatly influenced my artwork and shown me different ways of creating. I have always looked for non-ordinary things in life and, over time, I realised that I also wanted to create this way. I particularly experimented at one time and it helped me to see the world through less conventional lenses. But most of my inspirations go back to my childhood. My first artistic crush was a work by Salvador Dali. I was always impressed by his imagination and the way he saw the world. I also have a great interest in the mystical world of rituals and beliefs.
To spirituality?
Yes, it's something I've been involved with since my early childhood, when I used to go to different Catholic ceremonies. The church for me was a combination of art gallery, museum and theatre (I grew up in a small village and there were no cultural facilities or events). I knew every painting and sculpture by heart. The rituals, the choirs, the organs, the bells, the lights, the smoke - all of this practically created my sense of aesthetics and I think it shows in my work. And then we have a cosmos. For me it's a perfect combination of psychedelia, dreaminess and mysticism. We can see with our own eyes ancient gods, right above our heads, the ones that have an impact on our daily lives. This fascination also goes back to my early childhood. I was both fascinated and frightened by the infinite cosmos. As a child, I could stare at the night sky for hours (which seems crazy when you live so far from the city) but at the same time cry out of fear for nights on end, afraid that one day the black hole would suck up our planet and we would all die! Anyway, I find it nothing but perfection. It has always been a part of my life and my interest in it has always been renewed. That is why I have made it one of the main motifs of my art.
Nature, can you tell us about your connection with it?
Oh, I belong to nature. As I said, I grew up in a small village, in the most rural part of the country, near the border with Belarus. Houses built along a road, surrounded by fields, a horizon closed on all sides by the forest, this was the framework in which my world was formed during the first years of my life. When I grew up I sort of ran away from it. For a while I thought I wanted to live in a city forever, with all the possibilities it offered me. It was a necessary period that led me to where I am now, and I'm grateful for that, but as time goes by, I feel like there's not enough air for everyone in the cities. Despite their size, everything seems so small, crowded and restricted. In my opinion, life is a journey and I don't know where my road will take me but I am sure its direction is away from the big cities. I like to spend time outdoors and now all my goals are associated with this closeness to nature.
Among the very beautiful surrealist pieces you have done, one intrigued me a lot, the one with women whose heads are shaped like mushrooms. Can you tell us about it?
This is one of the most recent ones and I am very happy with the way this piece has evolved. My client, Michał, who already has a bust piece from me (we're about to start a sleeve) wanted to do a full back. His original idea was a psychedelic snail with forest elements. We discussed it and he eventually told me I could do whatever I wanted. But it had to be forest related, psychedelic and not have a face. Mushroom fairies came to mind. I had done this kind of design before in small tattoos, and I really wanted to make it big. Fortunately, Michał agreed. Walking mushrooms are quite a popular motif in psychedelic art, I just tried to translate my own vision of it. There is an alter-world in my head, with characters and their elements living in their own monochromatic space. That's what it looks like. Weird things live there! It took eight sessions to make it.
You just mentioned monochromatic space and your work is essentially in black and white. Why is that?
I've always created this way. I've had my little experiments with colour but the pencil has always been my number one tool so tattooing in black was natural for me. I like the vibe that comes with monochromatic art, it's automatically mysterious and sometimes a bit disturbing. Like in film noir. That's why I fully accept the fact that many people perceive my work as "dark", even though I don't see it that way. For me, it is simply mystical. Also, as I said before, I consider my work to be dreamlike and surreal rather than strictly psychedelic, and I like the mood that the use of black and white gives.
In the 1960s, psychedelic art accompanied a change in mentalities. Today, when ecological concern is more necessary than ever, does this message make sense in your art?
I hope it makes sense. I believe that we are all divine and part of nature. There was a period in my life when I was far from my roots, a bit blinded by modern life and various traumas, without any reflection on the world I was living in and my role in it. The psychedelic experiences started a mental change in this respect. In this connection, I would like to make it clear that I do not advertise or recommend them. Anyone who wants to try them should remember that they are not a magic cure, nor are they a magic wand that turns everything into a rainbow and makes our problems disappear. Psychedelics have a lot of power and should be approached with humility. They can show us the best things when used with respect. But they can also show us the worst when used unwisely.
Can you tell us more about these psychedelic experiences you refer to?
I consider the experience of altered states of consciousness to be something very valuable for our development. I am fascinated by the cognitive capacities of the human mind. Not only what we can know with our senses, but also what is inaccessible to most of us on a daily basis. So there was a period in my life when I experimented quite intensively with psychedelics, mainly lsd, mushrooms and changa. But my attitude towards psychedelics is, and always has been, very mixed and this is due to my experiences as well as those of my relatives. In my case, I admit, some were useless. But others have changed my perception of the world and of myself in it. They were the seeds of the process that continues to this day, of my growth as a human being, as a woman and as an artist. They were good times and bad trips. That is why I have a lot of gratitude and respect for these substances. However, another extremely intense experience for me was hypnosis. It reached really deep layers of my subconscious and had a great impact on my life. A state similar to a very deep meditation, on the border between dream and reality, suspended between body and soul.
Women are a central subject in your work, it seems that you like to explore their divine and mythological character?
I am a great admirer of all things feminine. Diving into this subject is also part of my personal journey to learn about my own femininity. Many of my creations are self-portraits of a sort with a therapeutic value. Diving into the subject helps me to organise my thoughts and feelings. I have had difficult relationships with women for most of my life and discovering divinity, cultivating a feminine circle, embracing her energy is a process that takes place in my life and in my art. What I create is how I perceive life around me and my place in it. This is why my work has become calmer and more surreal over time.
Your representations remind me of Art Nouveau and the works of the Czech illustrator Alphonse Mucha in particular, which were steeped in Slavic culture. Do you recognize yourself in his work?
Oh Alphonse Mucha is one of my favourite artists since I can remember. You can feel by looking at his art how deeply he was connected to his roots. I also have a lot of respect and appreciation for a culture that once grew in the land where I live now. The Slavic pagans, their beliefs, their rituals, their gods - all this inspires me a lot. Especially the female figures existing in a more mystical world, from the Slavic culture, like witches, whisperers, healers, herbalists. I like to think that I was one of them in some of my previous lives. I admire them, for their knowledge, their non-ordinary rules, their strength that often led them to live as outcasts but in tune with their nature, in deep connection with a world invisible to ordinary people. What is magical is that you can still find whisperers in many small villages in Poland, especially in the region where I grew up. The whisperer is a folk healer who whispers prayers while performing rituals around the sick person.
Have any other artists had a particular influence on you?
Yes, at the time when I didn't even know I would link my future to art making: Stanisław Wyspiański, Maxfield Parrish, Salvador Dali, Erté, Edward Roger Hughes, Ephriam Moses Lilien. I think we all shared a piece of common sensibility. I like to study their works in search of symbols and meanings, but also to analyse technical aspects such as composition, light, details or clever solutions that make their styles unique. For me, inspiration is a stimulation of creative thinking. We can learn a lot by studying the masters.
In the tattoo world, which tattooers do you look at in particular?
The tattoo artists I like the most are Gakkin, Lus Lips, Markus Lenhard, Shige and the one and only Guy Le. My biggest tattoo dream is to get a whole back done by him. So when you see me go to Mexico, you'll know why. In the tattoo world, I'm mostly influenced by artists who work on large pieces - and those are just a few of my favorites. But the whole world of traditional Japanese tattooing, biomechanics and tribal tattoos are worth paying attention to. They are timeless, understanding the body and accompanying its movement. Understanding these basic rules has helped me a lot in creating my own designs and has had a great influence on what I do. My goal is to work almost exclusively on large pieces.
The Christian religion is strong in Poland, is there a collusion between religion and tattooing?
Well, religion is strong according to statistics, but in real life I would say that only half of the population is really connected to Christianity. The rest are far from the church, having their own beliefs or not believing at all. The proportions are different in different regions, of course. Is there collusion? I think it depends on the people. It's like everywhere. There are Christians who get tattoos, there are non-believers who don't like them. It really depends on whether someone is able to make up their own mind or whether they blindly believe in stretched interpretations of the principles of faith. For me, religion is a very messy creature that tries to creep into every aspect of our lives, so I try to stay as far away from it as possible. In recent years, however, many believers have distanced themselves from the institution because of what is happening in Poland. The political situation is crossing the limits of absurdity and the ruling party is trying to take us back in time. Back to an autocratic, patriarchal, nationalistic and homophobic state of power. I don't want to dwell on this, but as a young person living in a country undergoing such changes, I can only say that what is happening now is shocking. + Instagram : @monika_malewska
