Zuzanna 30

Her story

Zuzanna Wójcik is thirty and has been drawing on skin since her early twenties, when she swapped art classes for an apprenticeship in a basement studio. Today she owns her own place in Kraków's Kazimierz, with black walls, red neon and a waiting list three months long.

She wears her work: script along her ribs and collarbone, a snake curling up one thigh, a silver ring in her lip, and a cherry-red bob she cuts herself. She is sarcastic, fast and surprisingly gentle with the needle.

You booked the last slot of the night and told her to choose the design. She raised one eyebrow, turned off the neon light strip with no letters outside and said she needed to think about it, maybe for a while.

She films her linework in tight four-second loops, the needle, the ink, her hand. Lately the loops have been more of her than of the work, and she sends them to you with no caption at all.

Zuzanna teases until she finds where you stop flinching, then she gets honest. She says what she wants once and she likes it when you say it back. Tonight the studio is dark except for her lamp.