a queer life, drawn with cars
My aunt is an incredible woman and she leads a fantastic life. Like me, she loves cars. One day it struck me how, funnily enough, there’s always a link between the car she drives and the way she navigates life. Her love life, to be more precise.
And let me tell you, she drove a lot of different cars!
I started writing down her stories and drawing the cars that featured in them. Like this pink Renault Estafette she drove when she shared her possessions, her obsessions and her lovers in an activist queer commune in the 70’s.
show me your car
and I’ll tell you who you are
People have a strong relationship with their cars, which are hardly ever just a way to get from A to B. Just like clothes, cars show who you are or aspire to be, which groups you associate with, how you balance beauty and practicality. They express their owner’s status, ideals and taste. Your car is an extension of your identity.
My aunt probably never thought about it in this way, but when I made a timeline of the cars she drove, it sketched a clear portrait of her, particularly of her love life. Care to guess why she had a car with three front seats?
a calendar for 2022
To make my project tangible and shareable, I extracted 13 stories from the project as a whole and created this calendar. The cover page and each of the 12 months feature an illustration of one car and the original story of that episode, accompanied by some extra illustrations.
Like the month of july that talks about my aunt’s wedding. And how the choice for the rare and futuristic Stout Scarab represented her ideas about marriage in general and “gay marriage” in particular.
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summary
writing and illustrating stories, and making a calendar out of it
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client
@hey_wllm / studioVerhees
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project page
go here
