Valentýna Janů: Salty Mascara

Valentýna Janů is a visual artist whose post-digital poetry smoothly morph from banal stories, Instagram wisdom, philosophical meditations to TV show dialogues and quotes from daily news somewhere between fiction and reality. Collection Salty Mascara confronts issues of the current economy, climate crisis and social identities. It proves that it is not possible to simply separate them from each other and each one of us will have to master the art of ‘‘how to be a sad feminist who is environmentally conscious without being annoying’’.

The book is accompanied by the evocative scent of amber, powder and salted lemon together with drawings by Martin Groch. Portraits of characters such as Tove Jansson, Tank Girl, Ursula K. Le Guin or Trixie Mattel suggest that we oscillate between imagination and reality and at the same time read a generationally characteristic image of Western (pop) culture.