Misha Waks
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Waks is a Warsaw-based artist who spent fifteen years designing furniture before leaving the field in 2019 to make art full time. He studied at the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts in Poznań. He works mainly with acrylic, but treats it as a starting point, mixing in found objects, recycled wool and fabric. He paints in layers, keeps going back into things, and often compares the process to how city walls accumulate marks over time. He has shown alongside the Guerrilla Girls and Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot. For him, art is a form of activism.
Q: You spent fifteen years designing furniture before switching to art. How did that happen?
A: My path to becoming an artist was a gradual process of change. For many years, I worked in design and business. I ran my own company and later developed a startup. Although I was active professionally, I felt that this kind of work did not give me real satisfaction.
Design, especially furniture design, felt too limiting. I could not fully express myself or explore deeper meanings through it. Over time, this feeling became stronger and led me to an important decision that I needed to change my direction.
At first, I combined different roles. I worked as a designer and entrepreneur while also painting and creating in my free time. Eventually, art became more important to me than my other work. I decided to leave design and business completely and focus on developing my own artistic practice.
Q: Your materials range pretty widely: acrylic and canvas but also found objects, recycled wool, and fabric. How do you decide what a piece needs?
A: My artistic practice focuses primarily on acrylic as a medium, which I treat as a starting point for further material experimentation. I expand its properties by introducing various substances, both organic and inorganic, allowing me to extend the range of techniques and possibilities within the material itself.
This process is exploratory in nature: by intervening in the structure of acrylic, I discover new formal solutions that open up space for further interpretations of meaning. The material is not merely a tool, but an active co-creator of the work; its properties, limitations, and unpredictability often guide the direction of my practice.
It is this dialogue with matter that leads me to develop specific series of works, in which form and meaning emerge simultaneously through a continuous process of testing and redefining the boundaries of the medium.
Q: Some of your recent exhibition titles are quite striking. Obscured Organisms, CALVED, Warsaw is Burning. How do you arrive at those?
A: The diversity of my exhibitions comes from the open and fluid nature of my practice. I do not focus on one fixed theme; instead, I follow what feels important to me at a given moment. My works are often created intuitively, and their meanings sometimes become clear only after time has passed. Over time, the works begin to form patterns that naturally suggest certain themes.
The main reason I turned to art was a need for freedom, freedom from expectations, norms, and established ways of working. I allow myself to act without overthinking whether something fits my practice or not. If I feel the impulse to create something, I follow it.
In this context, exhibition titles play a curatorial role, bringing diverse works together while inviting interpretation.
Q: You've described your process as intuitive, built on layering and reworking. How do you know when to stop, or when something needs to be torn back and started over?
A: The decision of when a work is finished is not based on clear rules, but on intuition. The visual language I create is personal, so it is not always immediately clear to me. Often, only after some time do I begin to understand a work, which helps me decide whether it is complete or still open.
Sometimes I lose connection with a piece — it stops affecting me. When that happens, I return to it, repaint it, and add new layers. A work is never fully closed, but remains open to change.
I see a similar process in the city when I walk through it. Walls become spaces of ongoing dialogue, where marks are constantly added, covered, and replaced. Often, people who feel excluded use them to express their presence. The same dynamic happens in my paintings — a continuous cycle of layering, erasing, and redefining meaning.
Q: You've shown alongside the Guerrilla Girls and Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot, and your statement ends with "art is a form of activism." What does that look like in practice for you?
A: Art can be understood as inherently possessing an activist dimension, although it does not necessarily have to take the form of direct engagement with social or political issues. Activism for me is not limited to actions addressing widely recognized “important” causes.
It can also manifest through a consistent and conscious focus on what feels significant from an individual perspective, even if it appears marginal or trivial to others. In this sense, artistic practice becomes a field of micro-engagements, where meaning does not arise from an objective hierarchy of topics, but from the intensity of the artist’s relationship with a chosen subject.
For example, an artist who considers the color yellow to be important and consistently explores it in their work not only develops a personal visual language, but also expands its perception within a broader cultural context. In this way, such an approach can be seen as a form of activism, subtle yet effective, operating on the level of sensitivity and meaning.
Art thus becomes a space in which every creative act carries activist potential. By engaging with a subject, whether consciously or intuitively, the artist enters into a relationship with systems of values, narratives, and representation, participating in their transformation, negotiation, or reinforcement.
From this perspective, every act of creation can be seen as a form of taking a position. Even if it is not explicitly ideological, it is always a gesture of choice: of subject, form, color, material, or context. It is within these choices that the activist potential of art emerges, diffuse, layered, and often subtle, yet inherent to the very process of making.
Q: You've had a packed few years, solo and group shows, Warsaw and internationally. What's coming up next?
A: This year marks an important moment in the development of my practice, as I am planning to organize two exhibitions focused on works on paper. This format allows me to explore more intimate and subtle aspects of my work, where gesture, material, and composition operate in a more concentrated way.
At the same time, I will take part in a group exhibition in Gdynia at Przypływ Gallery, where I will present a single work alongside performative actions. The performative element expands my practice beyond static objects, introducing time, presence, and a direct relationship with the audience.
