Mick La Rock (Aileen Middel, Groningen, 1970) is one of Europe's first and best-known female graffiti artists. Inspired by the traditional graffiti filleting style of the ‘New York School’, she began writing her name MICKEY in 1983. In the 80s, she conquered the Netherlands and in the 90s and 2000s, she expanded her area internationally. In the 90s – 00s, she worked and lived in both Amsterdam and New York, where she collaborated on large murals and was part of the New York graffiti scene. Her minimalist two-dimensional and three-dimensional work displays influences from brutalist architecture from the mid-20th century and abstract art from the early 20th century.

Mick La Rock about her participation in Museum Murals, "Growing up in Groningen in the 70s, I attended kindergarten between Helpman's 50-s flats and skated on the ice of the ponds between the flats. In the 80s, we practised breakdancing at the former apartments of Corpus Den Hoorn and recorded raps with friends in the apartments of Vinkhuizen or the Indische Buurt district. There were no large murals at the time. The city was quite colourless, except for the abundant graffiti tags and pieces, which I contributed to with my aerosols.
From Hip Hop, I developed a love for the metropolitan: apartment districts, concrete, brutalist architecture.

Over the years, my graffiti also developed.
My contemporary work no longer has the rawness of the street of that time, but I still draw inspiration from those above-mentioned elements and combine them with abstract graffiti.

If you had told me back then that I would be painting a (large) mural with my current work in 2024 in collaboration with the Groninger Museum, I would not have believed you.

I think it is very special to have been selected for the Museum Murals project and to be able to give the city of Groningen a work of art that fits in with the colourful zeitgeist of today, in which murals are appreciated as an art movement that partly emerged from the graffiti of that time."