Who is Malfeitona????

WHO IS MALFEITONA???? ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

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Malfeitona is a multi-artist, tattoo artist, communicator and researcher from Bahia. She gained artistic notoriety for being a pioneer and one of the main popularizers of contemporary tattooing. Often categorized as “trash tattoo”, “ignorant style” or even “stilo malfeitona”, the artist called her own style “tatuagens peba”, a common term in the northeast to refer to something cheap or of low quality. Her style generated discussion about beauty, ugliness and what can be considered art and put on the skin. All of Malfeitona’s creations and productions are permeated by Tropical Darkzera, a concept that goes beyond content and aesthetics, but also the method of creation and the artist’s way of being in the world. By portraying Bahian and northeastern culture as rich, plural and technological, Malfeitona recognizes terms such as “peba” and “armengue”, showing that they are signs of resistance and creative adaptation to the restriction of resources. At the same time, Malfeitona is against the romanticization of difficulties and seeks to demystify the idea of Bahia and the tropical as something light, colorful and at the service of tourism, highlighting its intense, energetic, temperamental, aggressive, disruptive and questioning side.

Her work includes illustrations of crabs and aggressive suns, the association of cactus spines with punk accessories and the mix of rock with Bahian pagodão. Malfeitona argues that Salvador’s carnival is much more intense than any black metal festival, that the mangroves and the backlands can be darker than any Scandinavian forest, that street vendors’ signs and signals are a lesson in design and communication, she is a staunch defender of the comic sans font and argues that housewives are artists and artisans of the highest order. Just like his uncle’s grocery store, which sells dried meat and food during the day, but functions as a bar at night and as a garage for his car in the early hours of the morning, Malfeitona believes that people can be and create more than one thing at the same time and leaves his mark on everything he creates, be it illustrations, tattoos, music or digital content.

Malfeitona’s works are a reflection of the great mix of references that make the artist unique: simple lines, but with many details; contrasts between the cute and the aggressive; serious subjects illustrated with humor, and light themes with sophisticated language; bright and solid colors, excess of information, a mix of prints as a critique of what is considered elegant, of “artistic academicism” and of the culture of perfection in art.

Expressive and original, Malfeitona brings influences from her childhood – the aesthetics of the 1990s, of comics, of Japanese animes that were shown on open TV, of amateur popular art – such as dish towels, daycare walls and signs -, and also of the street signs of shops in Salvador and the interior of Bahia.

The tropical darkzera and the “get it done” method: Malfeitona was born and lived most of her life in Salvador, a city that breathes art, but also an unequal city and one of the capitals with the largest number of informal workers in Brazil. Having grown up in the same house and neighborhood as her family, she saw her grandparents and uncles earn their living as freelancers, with small businesses in the neighborhood. She also watched her mother, aunts and grandmother take care of the homes, but also customize clothes, dish towels and create the art that decorated the houses. Malfeitona observed the city as an open-air museum, admiring the street artists, the walls of the kindergartens painted with famous characters whose proportions were distorted by the finish on the walls and learning from the marketing strategy of the street vendors and her grandfather, a market vendor.

The tropical darkzera is also reflected in relation to the creative method, mixing what she learned from the city and from rock: She saw her family and fellow countrymen taking on, with great creativity, multiple roles on their own and learning through doing – running a business without any degree in administration, using marketing and communication techniques learned in life; decorating and renovating houses and commercial spaces without architects, with art and furniture created by the owners themselves. Later, this vision was further strengthened with contact and references from the punk DIY concept, “Do It Yourself”. Mixing the two concepts, malfeitona adopts the “get your hands dirty and do it” methodology, the methodology of learning while doing, doing it even without knowing and for the simple reason of “I want and/or need to create this today”.

Growing up and living in Salvador brought her another great reference that guides the artist’s work in all spheres: Bahian baroque, an artistic style marked by exuberance, richness of detail, satire and, above all, by the contrast between the beautiful and the dark, just as she sees her hometown, where the beauty and ugliness of reality go hand in hand.

In Malfeitona’s work, these aesthetic characteristics also appear, but in her own style, marked by both the influences of rock and the scenery and heat of Bahia, where the “angry” sun is the same for some people’s leisure and for others’ intense work during the tourist season. Malfeitona creates illustrations with simple lines, but full of details, representing deep relationships such as religious syncretism with humor, where paradisiacal beaches coexist with dark mangroves with cute crabs, but with a murderous look, and abuses the figure of the bat: generally used in art as a “dark” symbol, it is one of the most abundant animals and responsible for the maintenance of biomes in tropical regions.

Personal and professional trajectory

From an evangelical child to a feminist rocker, from a mechanical engineer to a communicator, a misfit who always goes hand in hand with contrast, technology, art and culture.

She had a strict evangelical upbringing, and accompanied her parents to Jehovah’s Witnesses’ meetings and sermons. There, so as not to disturb the adults, she needed a “distraction”: that’s how she started making her first drawings on scrap paper that would be discarded at the end of the meetings, which they gave her so she could calm down and stay quiet. Since then, she has never stopped drawing, and today she makes paintings and stage objects; illustrations on walls, products and even on skin – having gained artistic notoriety through her disruptive tattoos.

Due to her social status, she did not think it was possible to dream of a professional career in the arts, as she saw traditional education as the only way to achieve social mobility. Keeping her dreams as a hobby due to lack of prospects, Malfeitona was an excellent student at school, having participated in physics and mathematics olympiads and won scholarships due to her grades. She passed the entrance exam for the Instituto Federal da Bahia, where she studied mechanical engineering at night, as she worked during the day. Throughout her undergraduate studies, she interned and worked in industries and construction, except for the year she spent as a student at the University of Linkoping, in Sweden, through a scholarship from Science Without Borders. At that time, she created the atmospheric black metal project Nornir, which she did not continue because she returned to work and studies the following year. Between jobs, internships and scientific initiation, she worked for 7 years in the engineering field, published articles, book chapters, and presented papers at international conferences. She worked for large companies such as Petrobrás and Hoerbiger, in Austria.

Malfeitona’s first contact with tattoos was at the age of 17 through tattoo artist Guilherme Neto. Malfeitona and Neto had, for a time, a band together, where Neto was the guitarist and Malfeitona the singer. From this relationship a friendship was born, Malfeitona had her skin tattooed for the first time and became familiar with the technique by working punctually as Neto’s assistant during Falsh Day events. She also observed the art of tattoo artists Mad and tattoo artist Palosa, pioneers of tattooing in Salvador because the studio where they worked moved to the commercial space on the ground floor of the house of one of Malfeitona’s best friends, where she used to spend a lot of time.

With no ambitions of becoming a tattoo artist, but knowing the basics of the method, while still studying engineering, Malfeitona imported an affordable tattoo kit from China with the aim of tattooing herself and her ex-boyfriend. The first tattoo Malfeitona got, in 2017, was one of her designs, a shy bat on her ex-boyfriend’s leg. To her surprise, her closest friends started asking her to tattoo them with her designs, including her tattoo artist friends who taught her how to improve her technique while they were being tattooed.

Whether because they thought it was unusual or unique, friends of friends started sending her messages interested in having a drawing of Malfeitona on their skin and she then started using a space in a friend’s house in the Morro da Sereia community, in Rio Vermelho, to tattoo them at cost price. When she posted on her personal social networks, she received criticism that the tattoos were poorly done and the designs were ugly. In response, Malfeitona created the Instagram page Malfeitona, advertising “crappy tattoos” as if he were at a street market, stating that no tattoo is forever because our skin will last less in the world than a plastic supermarket bag, satirizing criticism of academicism in the arts. The number of people interested in getting tattoos on Sundays and holidays, the only days when they were not working or studying, grew.

After a while, Malfeitona gave an interview to the local G1 and the client of the day chose two designs that became and are still his most famous works: Mônica Darkzera and Dollynho de Ressaca. The article and the artistic style, very unique and unusual among tattoo artists, generated controversy in the world of art and in the tattoo universe. Thousands of articles appeared on the subject, many with false information.

Big YouTubers like Felipe Neto and PC Siqueira create negative content about her tattoos and Malfeitona receives a wave of hate on her social media, including threats of physical violence. Afraid and with her mental health shaken, Malfeitona deactivates her social media (today she jokes about it – she could have gained thousands of followers). Along with the haters came supporters: identified with her philosophy and captivated by her art, people and artists begin to support Malfeitona, who returns to the social media after Turma da Mônica made the official version of Monica Darkzera.

From this projection, Malfeitona was one of the people who popularized in Brazil and abroad the so-called “ignorant style”, “homemade tattoo” and “trash tattoo” – which she already called “lame tattoos”, taking the term of northeastern and northern origin to reports published in national and international media outlets. For a few years, Malfeitona continued working in parallel with other activities unrelated to art, but, thanks to social media, in 2021 she was able to transition her career once and for all and dedicate herself fully to all the aspects of the arts that she loves. It was online that she found a niche to establish herself as an artist, and it was because of her fascination with the internet that she decided to do her master’s degree in Communication at UFBA, studying how the algorithms of digital platforms affect society, especially in the area of work. During her master’s degree, Malfeitona presented her work at conferences, taught classes and created the character Dona Algo, the algorithm of digital platforms. Dona Algo was created to democratize knowledge about how algorithms work and has participated in events and podcasts related to technology and communication. Today, Malfeitona is studying for a postgraduate degree in digital journalism and regularly gives classes and lectures at universities and colleges and participates in international conferences on algorithms and digital platforms, in addition to the democratization of science and women’s access to the exact sciences.

Malfeitona’s drawings are not only on skins, but on book covers, such as The Alienist, a re-release of Machado de Assis by Editora Planeta, on several products created by her or in collaboration with brands, in the visual identity of campaigns and events and even in music videos and animations.

In addition to her various forms of visual art, in recent years Malfeitona has worked as an actress, presenter, singer, DJ, producer and event organizer. Very active on the internet since the days of blogs and flogs, Malfeitona shares her art, worldview, ideas and political positions on social media – especially TikTok, Instagram and Twitter. Whether appreciated or criticized, Malfeitona and her work continue to be the subject of debate about art, beauty and ugliness in the court of the internet.