Irene Suosalo initially studied photography but felt the medium was too limiting for the ideas she had. Using her existing photographs, Suosalo began playing around with scanography to create more abstract images. Soon after, a friend suggested she try animating these abstractions and these formed the basis of her first animation gig, visuals for a techno club in Helsinki.

“I was really excited. It was something totally new for me,” says Suosalo, “and it wasn’t a conscious transition to video. I was really into techno clubs and partying, so when I was offered a VJ gig, things just started evolving organically.”

This progressed into Suosalo creating the posters for her sets, and then during the Covid lockdowns her passion for animation escalated as she took to making thousands and thousands of ideas and posting them to Instagram. During this time in 2020, Alexandra Zsigmond, art director at the New York Times, got in touch about an illustration commission, with the deadline being 24 hours later.