Mălina was born and raised in Bucharest. This year she moved to Timișoara for a Master’s degree with a branch devoted to game development.

She started drawing when she was three or four years old, simply because she loved doodling. What pushed her to get better was her dad. He had never had a talent for drawing, but one day he drew the horse from the animated film Home on the Range, and she was stunned. She couldn’t do that yet, and she wanted to do better than that drawing.

What matters most to Mălina is experience, especially the kind she gains when she is surrounded by creative people. That is why the Erasmus exhibition in Poznań, Poland, in 2023 was such a happy memory for her. She draws both digitally and by hand, and she loves working in cozy cafés. At home, she usually has a series or music playing in the background. Her taste in music varies a lot, but Japanese lo-fi hip hop is what puts her in her flow best. Her desk is surrounded by books and a small collection of miniature Chinese figurines.

With Agafay Books, she illustrates L’arganier, l’arbre aux mille secrets (The Argan Tree: The Tree of a Thousand Secrets, الأرگان: شجرة الألف سرّ), a large-format book about the argan tree in the Bab El-Nouar collection. It is written by Professors Ahmed Ouhammou and Karim Alaoui, in collaboration with the Fondation Mohammed VI pour la protection de l’arganier, and will be published in French, English and Arabic. Her hope for the children who open it is this: “I hope children who read my book will feel the marvels of nature just as I did when I was young and looking at nature illustrations.”