It’s impossible to pin a label on Cleo Kinnaman.
Kinnaman is a tattoo artist whose soft black-and-grey realism has been sought out by clients all over the world. She’s an artist who fuses DNA into her paintings to create a surrealistic take on portraiture that is distinctly her own. She’s the creative director of Mistr, a Swedish brand focused on improving people’s wellbeing and quality of life.
The one binding agent that connects all of Kinnaman’s passions is storytelling. She is a master chronicler who developed the skill as a child to combat her fear that she would forget everything she experienced.
Dominic Ciambrone invited Kinnaman into his studio to discuss how she turned her childhood anxieties into the driving force behind her art, what fashion means and much more.
Where are you from? My mother is Ethiopian. My dad is Greek and Swedish. I was born in Belgium. Then I moved to Germany, then Malaysia and then Sweden. Now I’ve been in America for about eight years.
How long Let me count: like, eight, nine years. But it was for my formative years, so I feel very Swedish.
