Viewing Minjinovich’s paintings of bird-headed human faces, adorable kitty pillows, and horses with comic tears makes the observer feel like they are watching a friend’s textual threads superimposed on the gallery walls, but, for the artist, this is simply a by-product of today’s observational life.
“We can’t escape the language of the internet; it’s now our emotional alphabet,” Minjinovich said. “Sometimes a hashtag or emoji says more than an entire article.”
“I don’t deliberately insert trends into my paintings… but I don’t filter them out either. I absorb the world, I scroll, observe, analyze. So, yes, the Internet permeates my work through color, gesture, distortion, glitches. Humor, or rather, bitter absurdity, emerges from this saturation.”
But what was Minjinovic’s real inspiration? It dates back to before the Internet: “The illuminated manuscripts, alchemical codices and miniature paintings of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance (they are) full of wild humor and irony,” she says. “Trumpet-blowing buttocks, beast-headed men, animals dominating humans, dismembered body parts, each expressing a different emotion without restraint. These are stunning pieces of work, intertwined with humor and mystery, more interesting than today’s memes.”
Yes, the internet seeps into my work through color, gesture, distortion, glitches. Humor, or rather, bitter absurdity, emerges from this saturation. ”
To complete her paintings, Minjinovic says, “I oscillate between intense excitement and quiet intense concentration. These two states are constantly flowing into each other. I can’t stay between them for too long. It makes sense; something needs to really move me, make me emotional, allow me to dive completely into a subject until I merge with it. I like to go all out, twenty percent.”
Minjinovich said that when she is excited, she collects materials such as visual notes, literary snippets, emotions she is experiencing and music. She says she becomes silent when she concentrates, “a deep internal process. I work for hours and don’t notice the time passing. It’s never enough.”
As she finishes her collection and prepares to pick up the airbrush, Minjinovic says: “At this stage, the emotions are no longer so explosive and a sense of clarity comes to me, along with an acceptance of uncertainty. Because it’s always there, the unknown. I try not to rush.”
When she needs to relax or recharge? “It’s a tough question. I often have a hard time focusing on one activity,” Minjinovich said. “My body usually needs to do something rhythmic that allows my brain to relax. So I look for ways to combine the two. For example, cooking with the right movie playing in the background is very relaxing for me. Often it’s something I’ve seen a hundred times (laughs). It’s not the plot, but the atmosphere. When I really want to disconnect, I look for places to immerse myself in nature, like mountains. The rhythm of climbing helps me break away from the daily narrative.”
This intense daily routine has paid off for Minjinovic in recent years. In 2025 alone, she has solo exhibitions all over Europe and America: “This year has been very intense and I’m very grateful for it. I just had a solo show at Prima Galerie in Paris. Next up are group shows at Hesse Flatow in New York and Yusto Giner in Marbella. Then in the autumn I will have two more solo shows, one at the Lotna Gallery in Warsaw and the other at the Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. It’s a lot of work, Torun, but I’m very excited.”*
This article was published in Issue 74 of “High Fructose”. Get the full issue here.
