Inside the Studio

Nisja Nisja

What are the major themes you pursue in your work?
I paint urban landscapes: impressions, fragments, and memories from cities where I have lived or that I have visited or imagined. I’m particularly fascinated by places that are lonesome, sort of abandoned, industrial, and melancholic. I love metropolitan atmospheres and their hidden poetry. Somehow it comes naturally to me to paint them without people, but with the obvious traces of human activity.

What was the best advice given to you as an artist?
Very simple, but so helpful: kill your darlings, given by my professor at the Art Academy.

Prefer to work with music or in silence?
That depends, sometimes with music, sometimes I need silence to think.

Very hard choice, maybe The Large Glass by Marcel Duchamp.

Who are your favorite writers?
Alejo Carpentier, Julio Cortázar  Paul Auster, John Fante, Charles Bukowski, Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, Heinrich Böll, John Irving, and all of science-fiction.