Magda Kirk (Magdalena Kirklewska) is a Polish artist (b.1990). She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts/ Painting Department in Gdańsk, Poland (2015). In her work, she focuses on the theme of the body in cultural and social contexts. She creates images of bodies in a dreamy, blurry aura. Inspired by models, bodybuilders, and fictional characters such as superheroes, she explores cultural patterns of female and male body image and their impact on contemporary people's identity, self-perception, and self-expression. Combining humor and horror, beauty and ugliness, cuteness and aggression, her work shows the ambiguous emotions that accompany our intimate relationship with the body as both subject and object. She uses popular motifs and symbols from tattoo culture, trash graffiti, cartoons, and broadly defined pop culture, often blending them into a tissue that forms the bodies' flesh. Her painting process involves the meditative layering of colors and airbrush doodles, resulting in an impression of luminous, unreal realism.