Monday – Exclusive Interview
MONDAY
Exclusive interview with Svitlana LIvshits
Cover designed by Marco Michetti @mvrcmatter
Svitlana, known as Monday, is a tattoo artist based in Amsterdam specializing in anime, manga and gamer tattoos. Owner of Duo Verba studio, her work goes far beyond the aesthetic, every piece carries an experience, a memory, something that once touched you deeply.
In this exclusive interview with Tattoodemy, we explore her world.
Growing up with manga and anime often means building a very intimate relationship with certain characters, almost like friends or mirrors of yourself. Is there a story or a character that at a specific moment in your life gave you something that reality couldn’t?
Honestly, I wasn’t the kind of girl who grew up living and breathing anime. It was around, but I truly fell in love with the genre much later, closer to twenty-five, and it was exactly that, a real, conscious falling in love. Around the same time I discovered that anime had become the only way I could genuinely rest. I don’t know how to switch off, that’s probably the most honest thing I can say about myself.
But when I’m completely drained, I just open a series and watch episode after episode, and something inside finally lets go. I haven’t found anything else in real life that gives me that same feeling.
But that’s not even the most important part. I’m the kind of person who truly falls for characters.
Not just likes them, but actually gets attached, as if they were real. In every anime I watch, I always end up with my own favorite, someone who feels like a best friend living inside that story. And I think that’s what I love most about the anime.
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If you hadn’t ended up behind a tattoo machine, where do you think life would have taken you?
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Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed of becoming a fashion designer. And that’s not just something nice to say, the pull was real and it started early, because my grandparents were both tailors.
I grew up around that world, and at a certain point in my life I even worked in garment workshops. It was hard work, but I loved it. Over time I came to understand the most important thing about myself: I am a maker at heart. I’m drawn to anything that can be created with my own hands, and tattooing, when you really think about it, is exactly that. Just a different material, a different canvas.
So if it hadn’t been tattooing, I think sooner or later I would have found my way to building something of my own. I’m not sure exactly what it would have looked like, but something made by hand, with intention and a strong identity behind it, that would have definitely been my path.
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Your style requires a deep knowledge of a very specific visual universe.
How did you learn to master it technically, did you have references, mentors, or was it a completely solitary path made of study and obsession?
No mentors, no clear references, just trial and error and an enormous amount of absorbing everything I could find. By the time I moved into anime-style tattooing, I already had serious experience in the industry and had worked across different styles.
But the transition wasn’t easy.
At first I didn’t fully grasp the nuances of this aesthetic, the things that make it feel alive and recognizable rather than just similar to the source. Over time, I think it was my love for the style itself that became my greatest teacher. It pushed me to look deeper, to notice details that aren’t immediately obvious.
And gradually I began to understand how to translate not just an image, but a mood, a sense of movement, the feeling of a specific frame. That, I think, is what I’m reaching for in every piece I do.
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The world of anime and manga is full of heavy themes: death, loneliness, identity, loss. How much of what you process through watching or reading ends up unconsciously in what you create?
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Anime is often associated with loneliness, loss, and heavy emotions. But it would be unfair to reduce it to just that. There are countless stories and moods living within it. When I create flash designs, they often come from emotional peaks, those moments that literally pull the ground from under your feet.
We don’t want to carry an image on our skin, we want to carry an experience.
Something that opened our eyes to a situation in real life. Something that taught us how to love, how to be a friend, how to forgive. I genuinely believe that anime is one of the best guides to understanding yourself.
Through it, especially through its most painful moments, we discover how we’re wired emotionally, how we respond to the world around us. And an anime tattoo is special in that sense. It’s not just a style choice, it’s a desire to permanently keep on your skin something that once touched you deeply. My flash designs do often lean into dramatic, emotionally charged imagery.
But what guides me is depth, regardless of what color it comes in.
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You own a renowned studio, you’re recognized across Europe, and you built all of this around a style that many would have called too niche.
What would you say today to a young tattoo artist who has a very specific vision but is afraid to start?
A niche is an advantage, not a limitation.
Yes, there may be fewer clients, but the competition is incomparably lower. In a smaller space, people can actually see you. Even if there are others working in the same direction, you still remain visible, because the circle is small. In a broad niche you risk simply disappearing into the crowd.
Now about myself, and I’ll be honest here. I have a studio with a name, but I bought it, I didn’t build it from scratch. Yes, I’m working now to make that name even louder, but it would be wrong to pretend I walked some heroic path from nothing.
And as for why people know me across Europe, I think it has less to do with my style and more to do with my personality. I’m just the kind of person who’s hard to go unnoticed. A very humble answer, I know.
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Thank you for joining us on this journey
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