2021 | 2020 | 2019

The pandemic made a lot of issues more obvious and painful to deal with, both at a personal and society level. There were many times I went offline to focus on work and to reclaim some solitude, something that I needed more of, despite isolation being the default way of life for most of the year. My illustration was a summary of what I had seen and felt when I went offline. Watching people online fighting and trying to one up each other was exhausting... I had also planned to visit New York in the summer too, but that became impossible and I found myself working even more instead. There were also many attempts to ‘fix’ myself and get my shit together, whatever that means. Clowns became continuous motif throughout my personal illustrations, as it represents to me a sense of cynicism that I observed in myself and others during that year.

I think a lot about my favourite lines in the poem that inspired this illustration: Mary Oliver for Corona Times—Thoughts after the poem Wild Geese by Adrie Kusserow: