Renaissance, Rebellion, and Revolution in 2025? … SAY LESS
Photos by Kaden Bard Dawson
Words by Danielle Gadus
12.31.24
With the illusion of linear time in mind, the start of a new year is an amazing time to reaffirm your purpose, establish good habits, and foster the ‘jump start’ of energy to fuel you towards your goals. Anyone involved with making their dreams a reality, manifestation, or the subtle energy realms at large will tell you that activating all of your senses is the best way to bring dreams into a 3D reality. In celebration of 2025, the Year of the Snake in the Chinese zodiac, we asked 25 artists who are impacting their communities in a positive way the same question:
What does 2025 taste like?
Their answers range from painfully awake to the chaos within our societies, to hopeful and beautiful, to outright slutty, and everything in between.
“What 2025 tastes like for me is rage and carework. I see so much pain, inequity, and violence that I can't not feel rage. There is a bitter taste in my mouth but there is so much sweetness and joy that I won't rob myself of. It's hard not to feel cognitive dissonance when confronted by personal joy and public suffering.
But if we let that overwhelm us we will lose ourselves. That joy is the groundwork for taking care of each other. It allows us to extend our network of care to reach as many as we can. It allows us to see abundance and generosity.”
2. Ana Anu, Interdisciplinary Artist, Educator, Founder of Forest For Trees Collective
“2025 tastes like pie! What else would it taste like? It looks like more art on Governors Island, more exhibitions, shared studio space. It looks like a good time. Tastes like pie.”
3. Caine Casket, Musician
“2025 tastes smoky—sweet, bitter, sour, and savory all at once. It’s a reflection of something multifaceted, layered, and deeply interconnected.
Artistically, it’s the revelation of new frontiers and the trimming of excess, It taste like fusion of tradition and innovation— a taste you’ve never quite experienced before, yet somehow, it feels familiar, as if it was always meant to be.”
4. Catherine Zingg (Ho-Chunk Nation), Policy Writer, Essayist, Gardener
“What 2025 tastes like: fennel seeds, grape vine cherry tomatoes, sunflower stems, sweat between your hand and mine, warm soil, wind chimes, I just want to be soft again.”
5. Danielle Paterson, Art + Tech Advisor and Curator
“2025 tastes like fermented salt— complex, alive, and forged through transformation. In a world turning cold through cyber-revolution and trad-rebellion, we can lead with the balance of intention and surrender, embodying the patience of things left to grow and the mindfulness behind our thoughts and actions.
As our natural biology is broken down by the challenges of our times, we have the opportunity to build something stronger through collective care and time. A new recipe for survival—not by surrendering to the synthetic or viral forces, but by reclaiming power in what is real and right. The future depends on our deliberate acts of creation and the choice to uplift the people and communities around us.”
6. Ella St. Hilaire, Writer, Filmmaker, Scholar and Creative Consultant
“PARADOX. I hope to continue developing film and video installation projects that explore diasporic errant visuality and searching-as-belonging in urban spaces. This past year I got to work a lot with 16mm film, and explore the contradictions of meaning-making within an elite academic space.
As artists and scholars we are often encouraged to develop our niches within the research institution. This personally satisfies my intellectual and creative curiosity while at the same time often distancing me from the marginalized communities that I hope to be in dialogue with.
I'm looking forward to graduating from my masters program, moving to Paris, and doing more grounded, material work in collaboration with other people of the Caribbean diaspora who have found themselves sociopolitically ruptured from their familial homelands. I think most of us feel the human urge to belong, but I've also found so much creative richness in unbelonging, and this is the paradox I hope to aesthetically represent in my work in 2025.”
7. Estephanie, Artist and Musician
“2025 has so many tastes and textures. 2025 tastes like lemon because I sense this brightness that’s to come in this new year. And it's pungent; soft but tough; ready to wipe away what does not work and bring in fresh and new.
For me personally; It feels and tastes like women; powerful; soothing; emotional; sensual; unstoppable. Personally, I've been really diving into my own womanhood, and embracing both my feminine and masculine side. With that I’d also say 2025 tastes ambiguous; it tastes like everything because it is everything coming to a boil. It's like a hearty soup. Packed with flavor. 2025 tastes like music for sure.
And this next year, I got a lot of new flavors I'm cooking up. 2025 tastes like the color red; I mean in 2024 we’ve been getting super bold with art expression. We are also bending social constructs, and really making our voices heard with community and activism; I love that. I feel like we’re just going to get bolder. We're in the middle of a renaissance, and yet this is only the beginning.”
8. Gilly Chan, Artist, DJ, and Model
“2025 feels like leaving behind inertia and returning to analog ways of researching and finding inspiration—through libraries, archives, and record shops. It feels like showing up more for people and their projects (holding myself accountable for this) and embracing the art of not overthinking, instead following intuition. It’s about staying open to sharing work authentically and remaining true to yourself in every step of the journey.”
9. Jacob Hartman, Painter, Multi-media Artist, Group Critique Organizer
“2025 tastes like frozen berries. Because they are a little treat that you get after a lot of hard work. I think artistically and community wise we have been putting in a lot of work and it’s time for us to enjoy the fruits of our labor!”
“2025 tastes like metal..
When I was a child I used to go into involuntary trance states. It would happen in the forest by a special stream or in the middle of Houston street. Seconds before I would have a metallic taste in my mouth that would herald the oncoming ecstatic state.
Artists are the ancient mediums of today. The best artists are those that can get out of the way and allow the spirit of the time to mingle with their spirit.
The microbes came to me during Covid. With the overwhelming focus on purity and sanitization that characterized that time, I started to feel the presence of benevolent microbes and their relationship to human life as our two billion year old ancestors.”
11. Ken Castaneda/BDGTA - Artist, Musician, Director at Company Gallery
“I think 2025 tastes experimental, it tastes like - you’re gonna just do something and you’re not gonna know exactly where it’s going to take you, or what’s going to happen, or if you’re gonna get money from it, or if someone is going to notice.
I think 2025 is about doing the best work that you can for yourself and not for anyone else- and I’d like to argue that that’s how every year should taste.”
12.Krithi Nalla, Designer and Artist
“2025 is going to be like pop rocks - fast, wild, and electric. I'm reminded of how pop rocks were this experimental candy passed around in classrooms with a "try this, it feels so different" energy. Their playful, almost mischievous nature provided that zap you needed when regular candy started to feel boring.
To me, next year is going to feel like an intense burst of sensory experiences and new ways to create, with micro-revolutions popping off everywhere. We'll see tons of new channels for expression, each competing to spark our curiosity. It's either going to be pure chaotic joy or just chaos - but either way, it's going to shake things up.”
13. LJ Jaeger, Multifaceted Swag Consultant
“2025 tastes like lingering Marlboro light smoke on the lips of two girls kissing. They just wrapped a passion project and they're celebrating with cheap beer and maybe a game of pool. They will see where the night takes them, I heard there are some afters.”
14. Lola Dement Myers, Artist, Designer, Co-Founder of Lucky Jewel
“2025 tastes like nothing (in a positive way).”
15. Luz, Interdisciplinary Artist
“I think 2025 was going to taste like a sour candy, and that creatively, that'll look like people doing very weird things and being open to doing stranger things with their work, and getting good reception and feedback from that. People, myself included, will be more open to experimentation, collaboration, and growth in general.”
16. Marz, Mixed Media Artist
“It tastes like success in all aspects. After the crazy year we’ve had, I believe that 2025 will bring community together more than ever and we will make great strides in changing what has corrupted this society. We will learn to love more, not just others, but ourselves.
This is the year of radical self love and accepting ourselves for who we are. I’m reaching new heights in 2025 & pushing myself to experiment and try new things artistically.”
17. Nadia Chilmonik, Sculptor and Painter
“2025 will taste like getting your tongue stuck to a frozen metal pole, or heavy metals in seawater—even putting pennies in a gin and tonic.
It'll have all the wonderful things that we love about life, but it will be filled with things that the FDA is too ineffective to ban. I believe our art will reflect equal parts joy and disgust.”
18. Natasha Gornik, Photographer, Visual Artist, Sightlines Curator
“So, I absolutely hate milk. I always have, and I once had a nightmare that I had to eat an entire loaf of bread soaked in milk. I'm very afraid that that is what 2025 is going to taste like because of the upcoming presidency, because of the state of the world, because of our country.
I live in New York City, so there's also the potential that it will taste like a perfectly ripe cherry, because New York City is juicy—juicy with community and creativity in creating from chaos. So, hoping for the latter.”
19. Obadah Aljefri, Multidisciplinary Artist
“2024 tastes like Starbucks coffee: she can’t seem to get it right, morally corrupt, anxiety-inducing, stomach-turning, and brought to you by a large soulless corporation; you might need lots of sweetener to sugarcoat the taste of the burnt coffee.
Out of those toxic burnt coffee grounds, honey, 2025 is giving a phoenix egg. mystical, triumphant, full of raw potential. Will she be cracked prematurely into some rich/powerful asshole’s brotien shake, or will she realize her full potential, rise from the ashes, use her tears to concoct healing elixirs? Who knows, only time will tell.”
20. Peter Cage, Queer Photographer, Filmmaker, Performance Artist, Curator, Kink Evangelist
“Honestly, I think it’s gonna taste like piss, but let’s break that down.
I drink piss all the time. I drink strangers’ piss at the bar. I drink my boyfriend’s piss at home. I love drinking piss. People are always like, “wow, I can’t believe you like the taste of piss!”
Here’s the thing though. No one really likes the taste of piss. It tastes gross. But I like drinking it because it shows my devotion to being a kinky pig; I like drinking it as an act of willful defiance against the standards of good manners and propriety; and I like drinking it because it connects me really closely to myself as an animal, as a creature of desire, disgust, and pleasure. And of course, it turns me on like crazy.
I guess what I mean is, 2025 isn’t gonna taste good. Our politics are fucked and our culture is in a tailspin. It’s easy to become nihilistic. But I’m gonna gulp it all down, all the sour salty liquid, and I’m gonna grin defiantly while I’m doing it.”
21. Rebekah Sherman-Myntti, New York-based filmmaker, co-founder of film production company Simone Films, and founder of The Downtown Festival.
“2025 tastes like a vivid and dynamic blend of experimentation, innovation, and collaboration. The flavors of art, culture, and community will be bold and unpredictable this year as there's a tang of rebellion in the air.
We can count on artistic communities to challenge the status quo and redefine norms. As we step into our collective future, I’m excited for creativity to continue to foster connection, with all of us evolving and growing together.”
22. Sam Diorr, Artist, Tattoo Artist, Co-Founder of Junto
“In terms of art and culture, 2025 is going to taste like a bag of Hot Cheetos. It's going to be spicy and finger-licking goood. Mhmm ! I can't wait.”
23. Star & Stan, Performance Duo including Kate Williams and Reed Rushes
Kate Williams, Performance Artist, Seamstress
“I honestly have no idea what 2025 is going to bring, but not in a scary way, I think more I feel an excitement and curiosity to see what the year will be like. For me going into 2025 I just keep repeating the word “trust” to myself in whatever way the year brings, whether it’s with yourself, with others, with a thing.”
![]()
“I honestly have no idea what 2025 is going to bring, but not in a scary way, I think more I feel an excitement and curiosity to see what the year will be like. For me going into 2025 I just keep repeating the word “trust” to myself in whatever way the year brings, whether it’s with yourself, with others, with a thing.”
Reed Rushes, Performance Artist, Filmmaker, Sculptor
“I think 2025 is about finding balance between all the different elements and strands in life. I guess it tastes like a noodle soup, with meaty, vegetable and spicy bits.
It’s about being present with each moment that comes along, no matter what it is; creative projects and performances, being with community, friends & family or protesting. Being with the sad, hard things but also the really good things. Making sure to play, rest and find those moments of quiet in and amongst it all.”
24. Steven Harwick, Cross-Disciplinary Artist, Creator of Bound Leather Zine
“2025 tastes like the collective spitting out of a ball gag with notes of leather and liberation. It’s the year of the bratty sub – pushing hard up against indulgence whilst simultaneously dismantling the structures that seek to stifle and strangle us
in the very antithesis of sexy BDSM.
It tastes like orgy-levels of community – a cumming together and coming together. It tastes like rabid freedom.”
25. Vincent Tiley, Artist and Professor
“I hope 2025 tastes like sweet revenge.”
