Synchronicity of Bombelek 🫧💣⚡️
By Anna Biela, Ph.D.
How i became a graffiti writer, started writing ANER, and became known as Bombelek
Even though I write ANER, the Wrocław graffiti writers call me Bombelek.
I entered the graffiti scene of Wrocław as the girlfriend of a graffiti writer, and what it turned out was that my boyfriend was one of the oldest writers in Wrocław and quite a famous one. He has lived all around the world, so you may have even seen his work in London. But I am not allowed to write his name, so we will leave it at that.
He trained me in the art of graffiti. We painted together for three years, from 2013–2016, and I probably did over 30 ANERs all over Wrocław and in some European cities, like Amsterdam and Munich.
My style is wobbly typography based on a font I designed in my first year at OCAD, “Gelust.” I squared out the inside “light” of Futura Medium Condensed, and based on the proportions of this typeface, I write ANER and other words. Like in Palestine, in the West Bank, where I wrote HEART and ISSA. The font works best with lowercase letters, and I write everything in lowercase.
My tag, ANER, is made from one line, and it starts with the “a” with the belly without the back. It looks like a wavy line, but it is not—it says “aner,” and the “r” always flows into a 2 for the year 2026.
I painted my first mural when I was 13 years old. I painted it in my bedroom. I had powder-pink walls and painted black lines resembling Op Art. I did a mural in my screen-printing studio in high school, and then the next mural was at the Municipal Stadium that they built for EURO 2012 in Wrocław. The mural is still there, about 20 meters long and 3 meters high.
It was part of my MADOA project. It was the second edition, a collaboration with the Wrocław soccer team’s marketing department, “Śląsk Wrocław.” They gave me digital LED screens around the stadium, telebeam time, and other advertising surfaces to showcase my art and the art of my collaborators during televised soccer games. They were the number-one team in Poland then, so the stadium would be quite full for their games. It seats 40,000 people.
Part of the project was that I asked if I could paint the stadium walls, and they said yes. So my artist friends and I got to work. We were given artistic freedom and could paint anywhere. There was only one proper graffiti writer, and he suggested we sign with nicknames. That was the first time I signed “Naners,” which eventually evolved into ANER.
This was in 2013, and that was the first time I invited Banksy to come and paint. I wrote him an email when he was still receiving them.
Soon after this project with major media coverage of the games, we also got a lot of press. Every newspaper, radio station, and TV station wrote about the murals on the brand-new stadium.
That same year, a few months later, I was preparing a second mural for a solo exhibition at Gallery 212, which was located inside the shopping gallery at Sky Tower in Wrocław. They allowed me to paint on the surfaces of storefront windows. These were stores that were not yet rented out and were covered with vinyl. I painted my eyes that spanned across 10 meters, looking up at the Sky Tower, a new building and landmark in Wrocław at the time.
I contacted CEKAS, who was one of the artists who painted the stadium, and asked him for advice on what would be best to use on adhesive vinyl. He said that I needed to get some spray paint, and he told me to go to the Conflict Shop.
At the Conflict Shop, I met many of the Wrocław writers, and in the mix was my boyfriend, whose name I am not allowed to write.
He was very stern about this idea: no pictures and no names on social media. Anything that would connect him to me as a writer was not allowed, as he had vandalized the entire city since childhood and wanted not to be connected to me.
It was him who started to call me Bombelek, even though I wrote ANER all over town and beyond.
We painted together for three years, and after New Year’s Eve 2016, we broke up. I said that I wanted something more serious, and he said he did not, and moved out.
I started to do street art on my own after that. As part of the MADOA project, I got murals all over town, and most are still there. I did not limit myself to Wrocław and painted anywhere that felt safe and stress-free.
I have been painting on my own since then. I have never dated another graffiti writer or even another artist since that breakup. I had a few short romances, but they never worked out, as I realized in 2013 that I have a Twin Flame, and he has been on my mind since then. The love I feel for him is so intense that I simply don’t see a point in dating anybody else.
Honestly, I would prefer to be single if I cannot be with him.
We did organize a couple of graffiti jams and had some graffiti writers come from around Europe for my MADOA project. One of the jams was on my parents’ industrial building, where I worked for over a decade.
We had to paint it over when my family and I retired in 2024 from running two car dealerships. My parents rented out the building to other car dealers, and I gained financial freedom.
I was a graffiti writer only long enough to learn how to use the spray can, and then I incorporated it into my art.
I still paint murals and do mainly canvases, and I have not written my name since 2016. That is when we went our separate ways.
I was painting with his crew, whose name I am also not allowed to mention, and they called me Bombelek. I started bombing with them at many graffiti jams and on semi-legal walls all over Wrocław and the surrounding area.
They don’t consider me a graffiti writer, but they were very impressed with my skills, so they let me paint with them.
Once I got very good and things were not so good in the relationship, my boyfriend stopped taking me to graffiti jams—and that is how my graffiti career ended.
We are still friends, and he still calls me Bombelek, so the Wrocław graffiti scene knows me by this name. I still go to the Conflict Shop to get my paint.
The synchronicity that made me think to tell this story is that I compared myself as a half of a celestial bomb in my previous piece—and once activated by my Twin Flame, no Bomb Squad would be able to disassemble it.
There is another synchronicity connected to my Twin Flame and the Bomb Squad that made me have an aha moment to tell the story of how I became a graffiti writer and then a street artist, although I see myself as a painter.