Gwen Stok

(Netherlands, 1983) studied at the Willem de Kooning Academy and creates illustrations and comics that provide insight into human nature with philosophical playfulness. She has been published in various magazines and turned Toon Tellegen's animal stories Een Verre Reis (A Long Journey, 2017) into an app of the same title and De Genezing van de Krekel (The Healing of the Cricket, 2019) into a graphic novel. The app won two Lovie Awards, a Gold Guppy and a Special Mention at the Bologna Ragazzi Digital Award. During the pandemic, the City Archive and Centre for Visual Arts of Rotterdam named her "special city artist" for her depiction of developments during the winter lockdown: the repetitiveness, isolation and powerlessness, but also the increasing amount of postal workers bearing mounds of packages, and bike couriers. In Memoir of a Jellyfish (2021), Stok investigates what happens when gravity disappears and the path of existence is no longer linear. The result is a picture story in the form of A5-sized cards with an augmented-reality layer. Together with Bruno Ferro Xavier da Silva she also creates ink and wall drawings under the name Trompette de la Mort.