Sixty-Second Strangers, No. 1

Can a One-Minute Phone Sketch Be Art?

Chantal Verstraete is a Belgian digital artist from Leuven who draws strangers encountered in cafés, trains and waiting rooms. She observes each person for exactly one minute. She then looks down at her smartphone and, using only one finger, draws the face from memory in no more than sixty seconds. She never looks back and never corrects the portrait afterwards.

The drawings are not intended as accurate likenesses. The portraits show which facial features remain in her memory after a brief encounter—and which have already been forgotten. A device normally used to capture perfect photographs becomes a tool for recording uncertain and incomplete memories.

Critics dismiss Verstraete’s portraits as crude phone sketches built around a simple gimmick. Verstraete considers them records of attention: each drawing preserves two fleeting minutes shared with someone she will probably never see again.

Chantal Verstraete, “Sixty-Second Strangers, No. 1”, 2026. Digital drawings created on a smartphone using one finger. Print from the digital file. 80 × 80 cm (31.49 × 31.49 in.). Museum of Modern Art, Department of Rejected Artists. Purchase with funds provided by the Digital Art Committee. ©️ Chantal Verstraete. Photo by Jean Chapeau.

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