Post-COVID Coupon

“While the knee-jerk reaction of most members of the developed world was to rely on high-tech interfaces and social media, from Instagram Live to Zoom, in order to produce surrogate connected experiences [during the COVID-19 pandemic], Coit took a rather different, and ultimately low-tech turn…Ever the time traveler, Coit’s epistolary composition delights on multiple emotional as well as chronological levels. Its ornate blue retro typography floats against a creamy, parchment-like ground through which we see the spectral outlines of two figures with 1910’s coiffeurs on the brink of a kiss. Through these printed layers, Coit…has both compressed time—1918 is suddenly part of 2020—and stretched it out, reminding us of the nearly lost pleasure of snail mail amidst our all-too-instantaneous messaging universe of endless emails, texts, dm’s, and pings. Entertaining and elegant, the Post-COVID Coupon is not only a reminder of what we have so greatly missed during these cataclysmic two years but also a promise, from her, of what will have returned in a sassy yet stubborn future (perfect) romance.” - Jennie Hirsh, from “Before and After Language: The Art of Madelin Coit”