Magda Malkoun

I am a self-taught artist. I have been drawing since I was a little girl and I have always wanted to be involved in art and creation. However, life threw me into the corporate world. Despite this, I never stopped learning, taking courses, and drawing. I have been creating paintings since 2005, but I never exhibited them publicly until five or seven years ago when I decided to dedicate myself to art. I am a mixed media artist who began with oil paintings and then moved on to mixed media and acrylics. I fell in love with mixed media and, through Morrow Collective, I began my NFT journey. I did not know anything about it at the time My inspiration comes from women in general, particularly their resilience. I draw inspiration from cities like Beirut, my hometown, which has been destroyed and rebuilt several times. The city's resilience reminds me of the strength and determination of women. No matter what happens, they keep pushing and reinventing themselves. I have created several series of paintings, starting with the "Scars of History." This series was inspired by the idea that the strongest characters are built from scars, and we should embrace our scars, learn from them, and become better people. They allow you to become the person you are today and teach you valuable lessons. So I created portraits in the cubist style, with deformed faces that convey the story of women's history and strength without focusing on their physical beauty. My second series focuses on the lessons we have learned from history and is more optimistic, highlighting hope, ambition, determination, resilience, and justice. I use mixed media, incorporating my own photographs of places, people, and objects that remind me of my own journey. I deconstruct these images, selecting shapes, colors, and objects that are symbolic to me and using them to construct the face of the subject I want to portray. My Web3 journey started when I submitted my work to an open call for Morrow Collective's 50|50 exhibition back in October 2021. At the time, I didn't know anything about animating photographs, but I decided to try it out. I discovered a new technique for animating portraits and fell in love with the medium because it brings these women's portraits to life and adds movement. I work a lot on the movement, hair, and sensuality of the female body or face in my compositions, and animation helped me bring that to life. It was a nice artistic exploration for me to try out this medium, and then I started exploring NFTs with very little knowledge at the beginning. Now, here I am. I was curious to know what NFTs were, and I didn't have any expectations at the time. One thing led to another, and I discovered a nice community and gained exposure through my art and exhibitions, which was very rewarding. Artistically, I enjoyed creating animations and the process was the opposite of what I normally do. I usually spend time cutting and collaging pictures one by one, but with animation, I had to separate each layer and animate them one by one, which was also distracting from the photographs. However, it was aligned with my physical process, and I found it to be a fascinating process. I think people are a bit skeptical about displaying digital art, especially physical art collectors. They're not used to collecting digital art and they don't know what to do with it. However, the new generation is adopting it more readily, and it's only a matter of time before people recognize the value of NFTs and embrace them as a form of art. As with any new technology, there are always early adopters who gain trust and set the trend for others to follow. Real exhibitions that showcase both physical and digital art are helping people appreciate the value of digital art on a screen and visualize how they can enjoy it in their own homes. These exhibitions are helping to educate people about NFTs and their potential as a new form of art.