Michaël Husser, better known under the pseudonym MIKA, is a street artist from the east of France. Since his childhood he couldn’t resist the urge to draw, something that eventually led up to a career in graphic design and illustration. This quickly evolved into something bigger: drawing and painting on walls. The step to creating murals didn’t come as a surprise. Mika has been a BMX flatland rider since his 16th, a scene where he got inspired by a wide variety of the street art that we know today.
As his jobs didn’t bind him to any location, he spent 4 years in New Caledonia – the far side of the earth. Here he had plenty of opportunity and freedom to create murals, and experiment with his own style. His travels after this period developed his openness and adaptability to virtually any project. The artist’s interprets his personal work as a certain reality on a background of poetry, featuring large format portraits of characters illustrated in a disproportioned way. They are constructed like a painting, with crucial lines drawn as in a sketchbook. Ultimately he moved back to France (Bordeaux). Here he seeks to keep the momentum of his ‘research sketches’ by adding material in such a way that his paintings and sketches feed from each other. It’s a way of working we often see from illustrators or graphic designers that make the step to muralism. Obviously with a different result each time.
Portfolio
Your building would look a lot better with the art of Mika on there!
