Marko Zubak (Croatian, b. 1979) has painted and muralled a recurring character called Bugbot since the mid-2000s, work he has also released as NFT editions under the alias Mlibty since 2018.,,,,Trained in academic painting in Bologna and Barcelona, he later took up papertoy sculpture, joined the DADA collective, and began working with artificial intelligence in 2024.,,,,
Zubak was born in Zagreb. As a child, he began making art at his family's gallery on the island of Rab.He studied painting at the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Bologna in Italy from 1999 and completed a degree at the Facultad de Bellas Artes de Barcelona in 2006. Zubak then completed multimedia studies at CIPSA school in 2008. He works between studios in Zagreb and Rovinj.,Alongside painting, Zubak developed a body of papertoy sculptures, published in books including Paper Robots and Paper Toy Monsters.He entered the NFT space in 2018 under the alias Mlibty. His work there includes moving sketches of ghostly figures on the platform OBJKT and paper-doll-themed animations on Zero One.As a member of the DADA collective, Zubak contributed to the 2019 group work Screens: An Exploration alongside seventeen other artists.He later joined DADA's regrò initiative, which channels funds toward regenerative farming on land owned by its artists. Zubak's own land in Croatia is among the properties included.
Bugbot paintings date to at least 2006.In 2012 a Bugbot street mural for Vipnet's Street Art Museum in Žitnjak, Zagreb, covering more than 1,400 square metres, was chosen by employee vote as the winning design.Individual Bugbot works have since been released as NFT editions, from BUGBOT I through BUGBOT IX.Zubak first exhibited experimental AI-assisted work at NFC Lisbon in May 2024.In January 2025 he showed further AI work in the exhibition “ALIAS: Beyond Creation” at Artverse gallery in Paris.,The Paris exhibition included an interview with the artist by Primavera De Filippi.
