GG Yusupov

Madina Umarova paints the worlds of games for a living, the light at particular fictional hours, and puts her speed down to art school and deadline terror in equal measure. Her husband has learned to bring tea and withdraw. When a match goes badly enough she works the position up: the board as it stood at the moment it turned, properly, on canvas, and there are nineteen of them along the hall. All nineteen came off the cash tables, where a collapse costs enough chips to be worth the canvas. Visitors assume they are victories. She has never corrected anybody, and has never once done a win.