Munira Hamzah, known as Mumu the Stan, is a Malaysian visual artist and poet based in Kuala Lumpurwho works mainly in pixel art and digital illustration.A longtime fan of the band Linkin Park, she began minting NFTs in February 2021 after singer Mike Shinoda offered to buy one of her pieces, and later left her job as a creative leadto make art full time.
The name Mumu the Stan began as an anonymous 'stan Twitter' account she created to post fan art without revealing her identity, and it took off after Shinoda noticed her work during one of his Twitch livestreams.,The pixel animation that drew her into the NFT world depicted Shinoda and his wife dancing to his song 'Booty Down,' and it became her first NFT and first sale, bought by Shinoda himself. She has said she does not keep to one style, explaining: “If you made it, it's your style.”
For her pixel meditation series, which includes Moon's meditation #1 (2021), Hamzah starts with a single pixel in the center of a blank canvas and builds outward one pixel and one frame at a time, a process she has described as meditative that can take from an hour to two days depending on complexity.,After learning about the environmental impact of some blockchains, she researched alternatives and became an advocate for Clean NFTs.
Hamzah's pixel animation Terminal (2022) was featured in a Right Click Save profile of Tezos artists building community in the NFT space.She has been active in the Hic et Nunc community on Tezos, and when a 2021 security breach compromised the platform, she picked up on a phrase the hacker had used about aubergines and began minting aubergine-themed NFTs, turning the community hashtag #OBJKT4OBJKT into #AUBJKT4AUBJKT.Asked about NFT projects that serve the social good, she pointed to the Tezos community's fundraisers, including the Tibum residency for artists from the Global South and the causes it inspired, such as SocialCryptoDAO. She has said that because nationality still shapes how much exposure and access artists receive online, “it's important to have diverse representation of different nationalities and underserved communities.”
In 2021 Hamzah created works addressing mental health, including a piece for World Mental Health Day captioned “1 edition = 1 day's worth of prescription anti-depressants”, and pieces made from the foil packaging of her own antidepressant medication.Apart from her pixel art, she creates illustrations under the pseudonym Moon HMZ,and has created the project TEZOS TACO BUNNY.
