Mikaela Mia Papp was born in capital city of Slovakia where she lives and studied at Academy of fine Arts and Design, freshly graduate on painting department in 2020. In 2018, she joined Supplementary pedagogical study at the same school.
Her art transformed from geometric scenes of cities, mostly of her hometown Bratislava, to more material-oriented paintings where you can notice her interest in design and street art movements combined with the love for minimalism and pop-art. Using basic CMYK pallet combined with rust, varnish and phosphor paintings represents the feeling of the city and offers her to hide different messages in paintings . But there is need for movement to discover the different layers and messages.
Her work consists of two different ways of thinking about art – In first one, she constantly question art, especially painting and it’s place in the world – it’s origin, mission, seeking for the essence owned only by painting itself and she focus herself more on the material, colors and different textures on canvas commenting the feelings of despair, lack of theme in creation and change of art in commodity. In the second she is more oriented to the city and text, but still using the same principles and methods of work. Love for the city – the emphasis is not in the real image, it is a kind of homage to the city, the search for feeling through its colors and the texture of the surfaces, even in the neglected – the soul of the city and a strong visual appeal in the scuffed surfaces and rust that tells its (hi)story, before it falls into oblivion and is replaced and forgotten. But the city also is full of posters, advertisements, neon lights shining into the night, layered piles of paper on the walls, graffiti and tags as anonymous reminders of people living in the scenes of concrete.
The city is the main theme in her other interest too – photography, which is often used as a ‘sketchbook’ and with time she developed an obsession with empty streets, denying the physical appearance of humans, more interested in the city itself following the same principles as in painting.
Change Seven Magazine 