My name is Magda Staleva, born 1997 in Bulgaria.

My history with art - I've been drawing since I could hold a pencil as they say.  I had a very complicated family environment as a child and my artistic style was not exactly understood neither was a pursuit in an artistic education or career supported by my relatives. Despite of that I was signed up for art lessons in my small towns community centre. I went there for maybe 10 years and i'm still very close friends with my teacher, so that went well. I would say it was a very supportive environment, but I still felt very alien. At the time my style was fantasy and surrealism, surrealism was my first love and still is . I was afraid to experiment too much, or at all, i didn't feel too confident in making stuff that was too out there since well - conservative small town mentality, it just didn't feel like anyone would be into it. 

When I graduated highschool I was absolutely discouraged from pursuing anything with art so I signed up for a degree in speech therapy and moved to my countrys capital city which actually turned out to be great for me as an artist.

I started creating just for myself, just for the experience so I was comfortable with doing whatever - collage,  mixed media, clay. No pressure or inhibitions since no one was going to see it. That helped me really get an idea of what i want to do and what my style is. At the same time I got to experience the underground scene of Bulgarias capital city Sofia. Avantgarde, experimental music and art, punk, i got to meet some of my idols and like minded people. That made me decide I didn't want to just create for myself, and that i want to share what I'm  doing and be a part of an artist community, so I created my instagram profile last year, and that has been absolutely amazing too - I got to connect with a lot of awesome people all around the world and exchange experience and culture. The whole mask concept was simply a result of the fact that I wanted to share my art and ideas but i was too anxious to well, be me. With a mask it doesen't matter,  it could be anyone,  or maybe it isn't even a person.

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Underground, avantgarde and experimental used to be my favourite words to describe what I do, but I recently foud one I like much better - eclectic, as in combyning different areas, styles, ideas, techniques,  materials and so on. I don't want to stick to the same thing, I like surrealism,  expressionism, dada, collage, sculpting, photography,  I also write, I would love to try dabbling in video and music in the future. I love the idea of combining all of these mediums and more in order to come full circle and create a multidementional artistic universe.

When selecting artwork for the submission I aimed to choose pieces that I think embody that spirit of eclecticism the best. I decided to submit a lot of the stuff in photo collage form, combining 2-3 pieces in a collage because i thought it shows the connections between the diferrent pieces better and they look good in sets.

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Feel free to dm @hex_pixie if you have any questions or anything.

Best wishes

Magda Staleva

"I love the idea of combining all of these mediums and more in order to come full circle and create a multidementional artistic universe."