About

Mustafa Maluka's large-scale portraits reflect on the relationship between identity and cultural positioning mechanisms in modern society. He combines elements from disparate images found in magazines, in ads or online. The subjects are anonymous, racially and sexually ambiguous, and the emotions are silent but still strong. Pink hair, blue or green lips and skin speckled with decidedly not-flesh-toned colors are characteristic for Maluka's paintings. The works relate to portraiture's long history but Maluka takes it into a contemporary context where the idealised face is replaced with the distorted features of modernity. The portraits grow out of several layers of paint and splashes of colour, leaving an impression of the creative techniques as well as of the subject's many layers and construction processes. Mustafa Maluka studied at the De Ateliers Art Institute in Amsterdam from 1999-2001 and received his PhD from University of Amsterdam in 2006.