Art: Untitled by Marie Dashkova
An illustrated story that personifies 2020 and 2021 as an age gap couple. The characters represent our anxieties and aspirations as the year shifts from old to new. Young Year is fresh-faced and smells of hope and pink champagne. She is self-conscious of her blank skin—wants to be painted over with experiences the same way we cover our fresh calendars with plans and goals. Old Year is jaded and a little worn out—picture yourself frantically checking off your to-do-list a week before the end of year break. His character represents normalcy and office commutes, juxtaposing the naïve optimism we feel when the fireworks go off on January 1st. Read on to find out what happens to Young Year and Old Year—do they kiss on New Year’s Eve? Do they go steady? Do they part ways as soon as the confetti hits the ground?
About the author:
Suri Chan is a queer Asian poet, writer and artist. She creates art to give shape to her emotions—to help them crawl out of her ribcage into the world.
In the artist’s words:
My name is Marie Dashkova; I am 26, and I was born in Moscow, Russia. I currently live here. I started to be interested in photography at the age of 12 when I was studying photo-shop to create avatars and images for sites, so I decided to make selfies using old Sony video-camera that had photo options. I was inspired a lot; it became my hobby; now I could use not only images from the internet and photos by different artists, but I could also create something by myself.