Original Sisters: In Conversation with Anita Kunz

Anita Kunz. Original Sisters: 365 Portraits of Tenacity and Courage Installation shot. Photos courtesy of TAP Centre for Creativity.

Interview by Adi Berardini

Walking into Anita Kunz’s Original Sisters: Portraits of Courage and Tenacity at TAP Centre of Creativity on opening night, the gallery was transformed with 365 portraits—one for each day of the year—of remarkable women. Walking through the crowd, it’s clear there were hours of research put into the descriptions of the women depicted in the illustrated portraits. It felt easy to get emotional in response to seeing the spotlight reflected on these women because although some women are widely known, many of these women’s stories remain widely unknown by the larger public. The portraits’ gazes stare back at me with a sense of empowerment. Finally, their names are known, and they receive recognition after too long.

Anita Kunz is an established Canadian illustrator and artist with a wealth of accomplishments. Her socially and politically themed work has been printed in major publications such as Time magazine, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, The New York Times, and Newsweek, along with many others. She has received an Honorary Doctorate from the Ontario College of Art and Design and a second from MassArt College of Art and Design. Additionally, Kunz has been appointed Officer of the Order of Canada and received Her Majesty the Queen’s Jubilee Medal of Honor. In the following interview, she speaks more about her exhibition Original Sisters: Portraits of Courage and Tenacity.

Anita Kunz. Original Sisters: 365 Portraits of Tenacity and Courage Installation shot. Photos courtesy of TAP Centre for Creativity.

Original Sisters: 365 Portraits of Tenacity and Courage spotlights 365 original illustrated portraits of inspiring women, spotlighting many stories that are too often unknown and excluded. One aspect that stands out in the exhibition is the range and diversity covered by the portraits. You include different faiths, backgrounds, and cultures from different time periods. I also love how you cover diverse fields such as science, math, art, literature, and activism. Can you expand on your process of researching these women?

The most important thing for me in this whole project was diversity. I wanted to celebrate all kinds of extraordinary women, many of whom have been overlooked, starting from the beginning of time and the cave paintings to the very recent ones.

I knew that I was going to do a lot of them, and I didn’t want to make them from Canada or the US only because there are so many more. I mean, there were just so many. I had a couple in mind when I started, and then I started asking people I knew. I asked somebody that I know who’s a scientist and [asked if he could] give me any names of women who have been overlooked. So, he gave me one.

There were a lot of good resources, a lot of blogs, historical blogs, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Google. Even the Google Doodle of the day sometimes I thought “Oh, I didn’t know who that was. Let’s research her.” The New York Times has recently started a new [column], an obituary section where it’s called Overlooked No More. That’s a good resource. But it was not hard to find subjects, that tells you it’s kind of a sad thing.

It was very easy once I started looking. Now, I’ve done 365 and I have at least 300 more than I could do. And I feel that that’s only scratching the surface, this is only the beginning. This is something I could probably do the rest of my life and probably easily do a thousand, but I’m getting ahead of myself!

Anita Kunz. Original Sisters: 365 Portraits of Tenacity and Courage Installation shot. Photos courtesy of TAP Centre for Creativity.

It was fascinating to see. One that I remember standing out to me that I didn’t know was that the creator of Monopoly was a woman [Lizzie Magie].

Why would you know? It wasn’t taught to us and it wasn’t in the culture. For the whole project, I started with stories that nobody knew [until] later, especially in the book. [The publisher] also wanted me to add a few people who were a bit more well-known. 

I feel like I’ve barely begun [with] the sheer number of women who you wouldn’t have known. And even Roxane Gay, who wrote the book forward, she’s an incredibly brilliant feminist academic, and she said, “how come I’ve never heard of half these women?” So even she hadn’t heard of them, somebody who knows more about feminist history than almost anybody I know. Even she was startled by how many were missing from our [cultural narrative].

Since I’m an artist, I was shocked at realizing how limited my art history education was. I mean, there were women whose work, I thought, “How come I didn’t know these?” Incredible artists, poster artists, and painters. I have had an art education background and there are so many that I didn’t know who they were.

…They were out there; they just weren’t in the curriculum. We didn’t know who they were. They weren’t celebrated or even taught or anything like that.

I think it’s outrageous. Everybody talks about how the art world is so skewed in favour of white men, you know? A lot of people get lost in that narrative. I went to school for illustration, and I went to a workshop with all the best illustrators when I was young. They were all white men and they brought in one artist, Barbara Nessim. They brought her in for two hours and that’s the only interaction with a female illustrator that I had as part of my education. That’s really shocking because they were out there; they just weren’t in the curriculum. We didn’t know who they were. They weren’t celebrated or even taught or anything like that.

Anita Kunz. Original Sisters: 365 Portraits of Tenacity and Courage Installation shot. Photos courtesy of TAP Centre for Creativity.

The concept of Original Sisters started during the pandemic. What first initiated the idea behind doing these portraits of remarkable women throughout history during this time?

I worked for a long time as an editorial illustrator back when editorial illustration was a thing. It used to be that you could make a decent living as a magazine illustrator.

I always wanted to do things that had something to do with society, a social issue, or a political issue like that. I wasn’t necessarily interested in the decorative arts. I wanted something with substance, something that could have meaning to it. I was able to make a living with magazines and that was great. I started out doing magazine work, but the trouble with magazine work is that you do maybe two or three a week, and you just do the next one, and then it seems shallow.

I wanted to do, at some point, something that was a deep dive into something. I’ve done so many portraits and it seemed like a logical thing to do portraits of women I admired and whose shoulders I stand on who paved the way.

I did an artist residency in Maine, and we went out on a boat ride, and the captain explained that this windswept island is where a woman lived there in the winter. And I was like, “Whoa, hold back. How could she live on a rock in the winter? She must have built a cabin. I thought, “What would she have eaten?” It was rugged. I had to find more out about this. Turns out she was a trans woman, and I think this was in the 18th century. And again, I could not find anything about her, I wanted to fill in the blanks, and I never could. Then, I thought that I wanted to find women whose stories need to be told.

Who do you have in mind to illustrate next?

I started already; I have done six more. I did one of the first female photographers today and another artist who did the most magnificent covers for Vogue Magazine. I have another one here on my desk–Helen Dryden. [She created] just beautifully designed, brilliant covers.

I’ve also painted Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi Architect. She was amazing. I mean, there are so many more. There are also areas that I’d like to discover more. I need to do far more Canadian and Indigenous women because I was born here, and I think I don’t have enough representation there yet. I’m always happy to hear if anybody has ideas or suggestions. I’m happy to hear them, so if you have any, let me know!

Anita Kunz. Original Sisters: 365 Portraits of Tenacity and Courage Installation shot. Photos courtesy of TAP Centre for Creativity.

I also really liked how you did the text. Was the style of text inspired by the women as well? 

Absolutely. With each of the portraits, I wanted them to be a celebration and I wanted even kids to like them. I deliberately made them colorful and kind of joyous. For each one, I tried to do something about the background that had to do with the person. I tried to [capture] the time that she was living or and the same thing with the typography and wherever possible I tried to find their actual signature. I thought that would just be more authentic. But where I couldn’t find their signatures, I used a font that would sort of indicate the time they lived in. 

For Zaha Hadid, I tried to make the type like her buildings, I had fun with them. For the first photographer, I tried to make it like a stamp, like how photographers used a stamp on the back of their prints. It’s fun for me, and I thought it would just give a little bit extra instead of just a face, you know? I wanted to give it a bit more depth.

Check out Anita Kunz’s Original Sisters at TAP Centre of Creativity until January 14th, 2023. Original Sisters: Portraits of Courage and Tenacity is also available as a book, published by Penguin Random House. You can also find Kunz’s work on her website, anitakunz.com, and Instagram at @anitakunz. 

Reconnecting Through Recipes: Reflections with Meegan Lim

Meegan Lim. Harvest Garden Zine Interior View. Image Courtesy of the artist.

Interview by Aysia Tse

Meegan Lim is an illustrator based in Brampton, Ontario whose practice meets at the intersections of food, culture, storytelling, and social change. Since graduating from the illustration program at OCAD University in 2021, she has been working on zines, comics, illustrative work, various public and community art projects, and editorial initiatives. She was recently awarded the “Best Political Zine” for her publication Harvest Garden by the Broken Pencil Zine Awards in 2021. Lim spoke more about her love for food, zine-making, and the sometimes-bumpy journey of reconnecting to your cultural identity through art. 

You create personal and socially engaged zines that explore your cultural identity through discussions with food. Can you speak more about how you came to develop your practice at the intersection of these topics?

During school in my second year, there was more autonomy with the projects that I was able to tackle. I saw it as an opportunity to explore my cultural identity, but by food, it was kind of an epiphany moment I would say. I’ve always been a big foodie, always loved the Food Network as a child, and of course, familywise has been a way for me to connect to my own culture, but I never thought to combine it with my art. When I did, it was an obvious pairing. That was the start of it, it was just right in front of me and then I realized that there was just so much more beyond my own culture, of course. It’s beyond the actual physicality of food and tastes, it goes back to memory, it goes back to history, and it carries so many different meanings for all kinds of people. That’s what keeps me going back to it. 

Meegan Lim. MSG: The Craving for Cultural Embrace Cover. Photo Courtesy of the Artist.

In your zine called MSG: the Craving for Cultural Embrace, you reflect on the Asian minority trope and resisting these definitive boundaries of identity. Can you speak more about your reflective process when digesting these topics and then having them as a part of your creative projects?

I didn’t dive into these tropes or these histories until I moved away from home. That distance forced me to think about it more, I was researching on my own and trying to make it make its way into my own schoolwork as well, in my conceptual focus through my illustration work. I got into a big wormhole of the internet, going through big journals about all of these tropes, the history of Chinese restaurant syndrome. It threw me into a little crisis because it was the first time where I sat with those ideas and those concepts. I didn’t have that context, so once I was able to identify that, I wanted to document it because I have a hard time feeling my feelings. 

I don’t know if it’s like an Asian thing, but it was something that I just really wanted to capture in my art form, and it coincidentally lined up when I was visiting my family back in Malaysia. I wrote the majority of MSG while I was there. It was a mind trip of sorts because I was writing it in the same environment where I was experiencing those first cultural identity crises. The first time we went back to Malaysia I was maybe seven or eight years old and having that realization that you can’t fully communicate with your family, or you feel that big disconnect culturally, it’s an interesting feeling. It was like art journaling of sorts. I was not able to speak the language, but I [could] still understand that my family was talking about me, about how Westernized, how white, or banana I was. So, it was interesting to reflect on that 10 years later.

Meegan Lim. MSG: The Craving for Cultural Embrace Interior View. Photo Courtesy of the Artist.

I love the colorful and playful aesthetics of your personal risograph zines. I loved to hold it when I experienced it in person. What drew you to zines as the medium for the topic you address? I’m curious as I know you’re also a drawer, painter, and illustrator.

It’s exactly what you described. It’s the feeling you have of that physical item in your hands because it’s just so intimate. You’re like really intimate with the person, that person who’s reading it. I love how it can sometimes feel like those little notes your friends pass in class. It’s almost like having a direct conversation with the people who pick [it] up. I’m allowed to be as personal as I can. Zines were like a journal for me—It’s like art therapy of sorts. I had a box of zines where I just used old copy paper, no one has ever seen them, but some are just doodles, and some are just a bunch of words. It’s very much a very cathartic medium for me. 

Using food as a medium for storytelling can be the source of a very meaningful conversation for other people.

Are there specific things that excite you about using food as a jumping-off point for storytelling?

When I was identifying that food was something I wanted to focus on, I was also a bit nervous because with illustration, you can be focused on having a certain style or you get pigeonholed into certain topics or aesthetics. I was worried I was going to be known as the food illustrator, but also, I don’t mind it now. There is so much more than just food. Using food as a medium for storytelling can be the source of a very meaningful conversation for other people. It doesn’t really matter what my initial intention is with the illustration or the zine, it’s what carries on afterward because who knows what other people are going to get from it. I know you’re Singaporean, so you were able to get lots out of it [since] it carried back some other memories. And that’s something that I didn’t initially intend through sharing my mom’s recipes, but it happens and it’s really cool.

Meegan Lim. Red Pocket Recipes. Interior View. Photo Courtesy of the artist.

Yeah! In (Red) Pocket Recipes you share Chinese-Malaysian recipes, some of which are nostalgic for me, as I was born in Singapore! You included Laksa, a fish-based rice noodle soup that brought me back to some of my own childhood memories. Can you speak a bit more about your love for recipe sharing?

Recipes always just made their way through my childhood. Being able to share my mom’s recipes and some of my own recipes with other people, it’s the satisfaction of seeing other people create it or resonate it, or be like, “thanks for sharing this recipe with me, it turned out really good.” It’s almost a level of trust. Recipes are a form of oral and written history that isn’t captured a lot, especially in my family. It took a lot to get my mom to sit down and write the recipes with me. I locked my bedroom door and said, “sit on the bed” – we’re getting teaspoon, tablespoon measurements out of her.

It means a lot to be able to capture that because I’ll never hear the end of my aunts saying “oh, you better get your mom’s recipes, because she’ll go someday and you won’t have that.” You won’t be able to capture your heritage if you don’t actively practice it, right? 

Meegan Lim. Icing on the Cake. Photo Courtesy of the artist.

Do you have any advice for other artists who are just beginning to explore and reconnect to their cultural identity through art? 

I mean, I’m still figuring it out. My main point of advice would be to go at your own pace and be kind to yourself because it can be very emotionally heavy to discover all those different layers that you might not have realized were there when you were a kid. So just take your time. It can be hard to digest and uncover a lot of those memories that can be triggering and weird to uncover when you’re an adult. 

I guess my second advice point would be to just look to other artists, creators or educators who are talking about similar experiences, not only for comfort and relate-ability but also just inspiration for your own work. You’re most definitely not the only person experiencing that, so it’s important to recognize those other people, and use those avenues to understand what has already been shared, that way you’re able to really explore your own intricacies and details of your own experience.

When I was initially exploring it in my own art, I was very hyper-aware of self-tokenization and how it can impact how others see you. That shouldn’t be how you go about things, but it is something to consider, especially in an Asian community where tropes easily develop. After I published MSG, I was very hyper-aware of the lunchbox moment and I was like, am I just repeating the same thing in an echo chamber? So that’s something to be aware of but try not to let other people dictate how you are experiencing your own cultural identity because it is different for each person. 

What’s next for you?

I don’t think I’m going to stop drawing food anytime soon. I keep saying there’s going to be like a Red Pocket Recipes Two or I that I’m going to post new recipes, but it’s so hard to sit myself down to do that. Hopefully, I’ll be able to make that time in the next year or two to really distill all those recipes. I want to fulfill my own personal creative goals through those home recipes from my family. In terms of the rest of my practice, I just want to learn more of other cultures and how food is very much a catalyst for all those histories and memories. I’m consistently learning more and more, and it’s humbling because of course I’m not going to know the world’s culinary history. It’s very motivating to know that there’s always something new to learn.

I am doing illustrations for a Dumpling Anthology. It’s been really cool because I’ve been able to read essays from all these food writers about their favourite dumpling from their family. Dumplings are such a universal food! Hopefully, I can take on more projects like that.

Check out What We Talk About When We Talk About Dumplings, published by Coach House Books. You can follow Meegan on Instagram @meeganlim and see more of her work by visiting her website, www.meeganlim.com.

Respect Your Elders: In Conversation with Biju Belinky

Biju Belinky. Drawing based on a 1993 photograph by Del LaGrace Volcano. 2021. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Interview by Adi Berardini

Based in Brazil, Biju Belinky is a visual artist and illustrator who recreates historical queer photographs, reinterpreting them into colourful and vibrant illustrations. Belinky captures the tenderness of these relationships, depicting the queer romance throughout history that has always existed but is rendered invisible by society. Often sensual and emotive, her drawings bring fresh energy to the historical photographs of the LGBTQ+ community of yesteryear.

Biju Belinky studied at Central Saint Martins and the London College of Fashion. Before working as a visual artist, she worked as an arts and culture journalist for seven years, which aligned with her interest in queer archives and documentation. Belinky also finds inspiration in tarot and magic, her drawings inspired by the bright colours and pastel palettes of animated shows and vintage Japanese advertisements. In the following interview, they speak more about drawing inspiration from historical queer photographs, overcoming self-doubt, and their creative process.

Biju Belinky. Self Portrait. 2021. Photo courtesy of the artist.

I am drawn to how you recreate historical and contemporary queer photos and create new energy and vibrancy to them through colour and line work. Can you speak more about your practice and why you use these historical photos and references? Do you have an example of a favourite photograph (or era) that you’ve recreated?

To talk about how I started working with that kind of subject matter, I would have to go back to four years ago, when I went through a long period of time not making art at all because it fucked with my self-esteem a lot. I just had a lot of issues with thinking that everything I did was not good enough. But I could see that not doing art was also fucking with my brain, so I decided that I was going to challenge myself and force myself to finish things without thinking too much about it. And I knew I had to do it working with something I thought was beautiful constantly, so that I was sure that my brain couldn’t go “this isn’t interesting anymore.”

I initially drew from my personal collection of images of queer love and affection that I had saved on my computer from previous research I had been doing for a while, and I started creating artwork from there. From then on, I kind of noticed that this subject was just an endless source of inspiration, and the documentation on it varies so much, from tender to sexy and affectionate. [There are] so many different expressions of queerness and women-loving-women relationships and through that, I had found a way to express myself through my art in a way that didn’t make me suffer. 

It was a cool exercise to find these photos and the history behind them. You end up finding more about these photographers that worked throughout the centuries, these images that were lost through time. For a while, I was interested in more Victorian photographs and women seemingly in love in vintage photos from the 1920s and the 30s. It was quite interesting spending a long time thinking “Where does this photo come from?”, “What’s their relationship?”. And the stranger one to research: “Are these women together or are they sisters?”, because oddly sometimes you’d find a photo where you think that they’re definitely a couple, but you do research and find out that they’re actually sisters. 

I always try to research a lot and find sources, to make sure I’m representing people correctly, [which] allows me to develop my practice more. Once I became more comfortable with drawing regularly, I started adding colour and I started figuring out again what I wanted to experiment with and the [types] of images I wanted to see in my work. From then on, I started to add different vibes to the images. When I started doing bright, colourful monochromatic representations of the black-and-white photos, it was fun to look at the photographs and think of what colour this makes me think of in a completely subjective way. I couldn’t explain why [one] feels pink or [one] feels purple. I’m not going to say it’s the aura of the photo because it’s not. It’s just me looking at the photo and feeling it. Like this thing feels yellow and so on.

My work and the images I draw from are not all soft; I hate describing them as soft. But they do exist at the intersection between sensual and tender. I’ve had long arguments with people about this because some people are like “your images are sexual.” And they are, but they aren’t. I’m not making explicit erotica. Even the images that are more overtly sexual where [the subjects] are naked or half-naked, have tenderness and sensuality to them. They’re not geared towards creating the sort of “Oo you’ll feel hot and bothered by this” feeling. If you find them sexy that’s cool, but at the same time for me, there’s more of a tenderness to it and I try to communicate that with my pieces.

Biju Belinky. Drawing based on a chloe atkin’s photograph from Girls Night Out. 2020.

That’s interesting. I wonder since they are queer images too, how that influences how sexual they seem. 

Yeah, people hypersexualize my work a lot. I’ve had quite a few commenters, especially men, come up and be like, “Oo sexy, threesome,” just that kind of gratuitous bullshit. If you want to consume sexy content geared towards straight men, there’s plenty of it out there. This work, my work, is not for them.

I think seeing my work as purely sexual kind of stems from the same type of thought where people see queerness as something that’s purely linked to sex and that’s it. Of course, sex and romance are a part of it, but queerness is such a complex, whole identity. So, for people outside of the community to just try to narrow it down to “oh it’s about who you want to bone,” feels reductive.

If queer women see it as super sexy it’s cool because it’s self-representation. But when it’s straight men projecting, fetishizing, and commenting weird stuff then it always makes me really uncomfortable. There is this skewed way of thinking that if something is queer and it involves women, it’s perceived by men as inherently sexual and often performative “for them.” So yeah, I think there is a hyper-sexualization of my images because they represent queer women being affectionate in a variety of ways. At the same time, thankfully my art has seemed to reach mostly the people it’s meant for.

Biju Belinky. Drawing based on an image printed on postcards by Steven Meisel for the SAFE SEX IS HOT SEX 1991 initiative, organized by the Red Hot Organization. 2020.

I think it’s good to have that sense of softness and tenderness in your work. I was drawn to it since it highlights that queerness has always existed by going back to the archive.

I think a lot about queer elders and older LGBTQ+ people and how many of us got the chance to meet older LGBT people that were around us growing up. It’s such an important reference to have and I didn’t realize how important it was until I met someone over the age of 60 who was a married woman with a wife, and I was like “you have so much knowledge in life.” I think this absence of role models doesn’t happen only because of the silence around sexuality but also the fact that almost an entire generation of LGBTQ+ people died throughout the 80s. There were so many major losses during that time that it just became commonplace to not know older LGBTQ+ people.

One time, I was showing my cousins some of my drawings. Only the very tame, appropriate ones, mostly from Victorian times, and with their mothers’ permission. My one cousin is around thirteen, and the other one is around ten, and they asked to see the drawings since I had been working on them nearby. My 13-year-old cousin was like, “How come none of these people are old? How come so many of them are so young?” And I was like, “Well it’s hard to find photos of older LGBTQ+ people to draw. I’d really love to do that, but it’s hard to find people above a certain age that you can draw. And in this era, people were often made to get married after a certain age, even if they weren’t in love.” And she [said], “That’s sad, I hope that you can find many pictures of old people and that you [can] draw them soon again.” 

I was emotional about that because she was rooting for there to be older queers. I never expected that at all. I [thought] how do I explain to this young child the horrible, horrible things that might have happened? I was coming up with ways in my head to explain it in a way that was simple but also was true.

I think that growing up as queer people in the 90s, we didn’t see cheerful representations of queerness. We saw the struggle, you see the trauma, you saw people coming out, and then how their parents now hated them. But we hardly ever saw affection for the sake of affection, in all its forms. I mean, small acts between queer people are revolutionary in themselves. But at the same time, it’s nice to just see yourself represented in something soft and loving without feeling like it needs to be a statement all the time. 

It’s nice too because a lot of the narrative in mainstream media is about coming out or trauma. I don’t want to say there’s a shame, but there’s stigmatization to queerness. To see that queer joy, does bring you so much joy.

I just want to see happiness; I want to see queer happiness and show as many sides of it as I possibly can and as many different types of relationships and kinds of people as I can because I feel like there’s not enough of that out there. I mean other artists are doing this kind of stuff, but when you look at other media like movies or TV shows it’s still so rare for you to be able to watch a film where the characters are queer and in love and that’s that, a film where you don’t have to watch a straight relationship for two hours just hoping for the side plot to be kind of queer. Sometimes you want to watch something sweet and soft and it’s not about suffering or about shame. Violence might happen in the street, that’s a reality, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been afraid at one point or another. But it’s exactly because of that reality that I feel like my illustrations exist in a space outside of that, where violence is not a concern and there’s just this mutual understanding between the viewer and me of what the illustrations are and what they’re representing.

As much as we know this, logically, our history has been erased so many times that sometimes it’s good to remember that queer people have always been around, they’ve always been affectionate.

There’s a lot of art that I want to make about queerness that is a lot more painful or might be more complex in the way it develops and builds. But to have a space where I’m just able to see, especially when you look at older photographs, that queer people have always been around, is amazing. As much as we know this, logically, our history has been erased so many times that sometimes it’s good to remember that queer people have always been around, they’ve always been affectionate. People kissed and hugged and had sex and everything else for centuries. Queerness is not a side note in history, an imaginary bond we project today between “best friends” from the 19th century; it exists, it is registered. Its evidence is scattered throughout history and lives on even after so many attempts to wipe them out. It’s nice to be able to bring all that memory back to the surface through my work and to consume that for myself through my research.

Biju Belinky. The Lovers, 2021. Photo courtesy of the Artist.

Who are some of your artistic influences and artists you look up to?

I love anything by chloe atkins, her photos are amazing, and she did the Girls Night Out photography book. That photobook has such sexy and fun photos of nightlife. You can see that the people in the photos are so into each other, and drawing-wise it’s such a cool series of photos with so many dynamic poses. 

I also love the archival work that Gerber/Hart does. They have an online database of queer everything, they have zines and photography and stuff. They’re such a good reference, whenever I’m stuck, I always scroll down their website and Instagram [to find] inspiration. 

I’m really drawn to colour, not only in my drawings but also in the tarot series. I love the aesthetic of 70s and 80s Japanese advertisements for toys. They’re so bright and in your face, while still combining pastel tones with everything else. That is such a huge inspiration for me. As for artists that inspire me, there’s Nanaco Yashiro (@nanaco846) who’s a Japanese artist, and there’s also Choo (@choodraws) – they do very dynamic comic book-y scenes. Choo can draw clutter like no other person can. 

A lot of artists I’m inspired by have a unique voice to [their work]. I feel like I can see what type of person they are since they have such a clear visual language. Having that language [as an artist] is a huge ambition of mine. There’s an amazing wood engraving artist who does images of lesbian couples, Gessica Ferreira (@gessicaferreira100). There’s also Katie Aki (@miss_luckycat), Peter McAteer (@pete.ey), Anna Dietzel (@anna.dietzel), Helena Obersteiner (@helenaobersteiner), Savanna Judd (@heartsl0b), Joanna Folivéli (@foliveli), and Ing Lee (@inglee).

Biju Belinky. Spooky Girlfriends. 2021. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Do you have any advice for emerging artists who are just discovering their style and sensibility as an artist?

I’m an emerging artist myself – but a huge thing for me was a conversation that I had with one of my best friends, Helena, when I was initially getting back into writing. She has built her whole practice on the idea of mistakes and how accepting mistakes [can be one] of the best things that can happen to you. It was so important to talk to her and accept that my work isn’t going to immediately look the way that I want it to look. And it’s in the path of trying to make it look the way that it does in your brain that you’ll find the best things about your work. There’s a big way to go between your brain and your hand. When the image in your head is not doable hand-wise, you should just try to do it anyway—You’re never going to know what you find unless you try. That reaffirmed the phrase, “better done than perfect,” for me. I tend to be a perfectionist, but I can’t let my frustration stop me from finishing things. 

Another piece of advice I have is don’t be afraid to take breaks. I think we live in a culture where people want to consume things at way faster pace than what we produce things in. It’s okay to rest and take time for art. There’s a huge benefit of recognizing and respecting your limits. Do you, but don’t die trying to do you. Take breaks when you need them since it takes a lot longer to recover from burnout than it does to just stop once in a while.

Do you have any other future projects that you’d like to share?

I am currently working on my store that [has recently opened]. I will be including my art and an entire series on tarot cards. I am working on a zine with 20 other female artists in Brazil and the UK. It’s about myths about vengeful and raging women from across the world. We’re looking into feminine anger and stories of mythical creatures that are [based off angry] women. We’ve been working on it for a year and it’s in its finishing stages now.

[My friends and I] just opened a tattoo studio called Arachne (Arachne.tt). named after a mythical woman. The three of us have different levels of tattooing, I’m still starting out and practicing on willing victims. It’s all original designs by primarily fine artists in the language of tattooing. If you’re in Brazil come and get tattooed by us!

You can view more of Biju’s work on her website or Instagram.

Art and Conversations in the Diaspora: The Indian Farmers’ Protest


Ravina Toor, Healing Hug. 2020. Courtesy of the artist.

By Jaspreet Braich and Jasmine Sihra

Jaspreet Braich and Jasmine Sihra are two Sikh-Punjabi women who were both born and raised in Canada in immigrant families from Punjab, India. Jaspreet and Jasmine have written this article as a conversation reflecting their on-going learning about their culture and community within the context of the Indian farmers’ protest, particularly through the work of Edmonton-based Sikh-Punjabi artist Ravina Toor’s digital art prints.

Jaspreet’s anecdote:

Jasmine and I first met in grade 9 in our high school in Brampton, Ontario. Our friendship began in hospitality class where we learnt about baking and cooking. For our final exam, we had to bake cupcakes and I was completely lost. Jasmine was my saviour and helped to make sure that I did not burn them. We became closer and connected on a personal level because of our shared experiences as Sikh-Punjabi women. While being Sikh-Punjabi at our high school in Brampton was the norm, everyone had different experiences of migration to Canada from India. Jasmine’s family moved to Canada in the early 1970s and she was raised in a single-mother household that was much more integrated into Canadian society than my parents. When my family moved to Canada from Punjab India in 1996, they held onto many traditional Punjabi values and maintained strict religious practices as Sikhs.

Like many immigrant families, my parents decided to leave everything they had ever known for a better life for themselves and their children, me, and my brother. My parents wanted to leave the harsh and often violent conditions the Sikh community dealt with in the 1990s. At the time, India became an increasingly dangerous place for the Sikh community — in 1984, the Indian government led by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, orchestrated a monumental military attack, Operation Blue Star, on the Sri Harmandir Sahib (the Golden Temple), the most sacred and holy place for Sikhs. This was the result of rising tensions between Sikh communities for their own sovereignty.[1] Shortly after this, two Sikh bodyguards assassinated Gandhi, who was well-liked by the Hindu majority. Out of their anger with Gandhi’s assassination, many far-right Hindu groups —with the support of the government— instigated the horrifying 1984 genocide against Sikhs, where thousands of men were murdered, women were kidnapped and sexually assaulted, and children were slaughtered. This struck fear across the Sikh community, and many realized India was not a safe place for amritdhari (baptized) Sikhs like my father to raise a family. In the early 1990s, my father jumped at the opportunity to come to Canada, following many others seeking a prosperous future.

Within the past few months, signs depicting farmers, tractors, or the slogan “No Farmers No Food” have been plastered on cars, storefronts, and houses. You may have come across Rihanna, Greta Thunberg, or Meena Harris’ tweets in support of the farmers’ protest and calling out the Indian Government’s actions. In response to Rihanna, Thunberg, and Harris, mostly fascist far-right Hindu groups, publicly burnt effigies of their faces.[2] The farmers’ protest, the largest protest in human history, is the direct result of the Indian government passing new farm legislation. While India is typically lauded as representing the world’s largest democracy, these farm bills were passed completely behind the scenes.[3] No vote was taken on behalf of the people in India; instead, all proceedings were drafted by the current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and the owners of Ambani and Adani, multi-billion-dollar corporations owned by two of the richest men in India.[4] In other words, these bills were solely passed through political manipulation, unjust rulings, and internal agreements with capitalist motivations allowing the rich to make larger profits. This new legislation will privatize free markets to allow corporations to earn more money by deeming the minimum price for products, leaving working class people like farmers, at the mercy of the corporations. Through these farm bills, farmer’s ability to make a living and feed their families is impossible. Farmers are already among the poorest in India and known to be at-risk in terms of mental health issues, drug abuse, depression, and suicide. [5]

To fight against these unjust farm laws, farmers from across India began to protest in August 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and they continue to protest as I write this article. For more than 180 days, farmers have taken to the streets of Delhi to peacefully protest, but were met with tear gas, water cannons, and baton charges. When I think about the people who are protesting— those who suffered through 1947, who have seen the horrors of 1984 in front of their very own eyes, and now in 2021, protesting to maintain their livelihoods— I feel immense sadness and extreme pride. The farmers are not rich by any means, but throughout the protests they started langer (community kitchen) to feed each other and the less fortunate. They are providing medical care to the wounded and sick, and education to children who were unable to attain it— all while protesting. They took the opportunity to create a better environment for the less fortunate, taking on duties that should have been fulfilled by the government. Day by day, the protest grows with support from all around the world, even as the government continues to sanction violence against protesters and the Indian media spreads false propaganda.

Diasporic Sikh-Punjabi communities all over the world, such as in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, have also protested because they have families who are being directly impacted by these laws.[6] My entire maternal family currently lives in Punjab, and their only way of survival is farming. Like many of my Punjabi brothers and sisters, they have family affected by 1984, and now the Farmers’ protest. Events like these are the reason why many Sikh-Punjabis, like mine and Jasmine’s families, have left to make new homes in places like Canada. These events are also the reason why young people, artists, and activists in Canada create safe spaces for our communities to express ourselves and work through the feelings that come with watching people fight for their rights in India.

Jasmine’s anecdote:

I met Jaspreet when we were 14 years old in our grade nine hospitality class. Jaspreet often tells me that she does not remember talking to me, except for when she needed help making cupcakes for our exam, and I, in her own words, “saved her.” I started to feel angry, sad and disappointed seeing the media coverage about the farmer’s protest and, because of our close friendship, and I thought that writing an article with Jaspreet was the best way to explore my thoughts. This is a sensitive and touchy subject for the Sikh Punjabi community, and I truly believe it requires a certain level of care, love, and attention. For Jaspreet and me, writing this article is a supportive and generative act, a form of healing— not unlike artist Ravina Toor’s Healing Hug, a beautiful, colourful rendering of two Punjabi women dressed in traditional Indian clothing tightly embracing and comforting each other. Ravina Toor is a Sikh-Punjabi artist based in Edmonton, Alberta, and her work is inspired by Sikhism and Punjabi culture. I first came across Toor’s work on Instagram— her work Women are the Revolution (2020) circulated on Instagram posts in support of the farmers. I was completely taken by the image, showing a younger Punjabi woman holding hands with an older Punjabi woman, each with one hand raised in the sky in solidarity. In the foreground, sunflowers stand prominently indicating growth and liveliness, while the background shows women in crowds proudly protesting. Toor’s work points to the most inspiring fact of the farmers’ protest: women are among the leaders and at the very heart of the actions. Not only are they feeding protesters at the frontlines and taking care of children, but they are making their presence known to the Indian government as strong and resilient women who will not be silenced. Of course, Sikh Punjabi men make up a large percentage of the protesters and are often particularly vulnerable to the racial and anti-Sikh violence perpetrated by the police, but alongside men stand resilient women working to protect their families and village’s livelihoods.

Women of different ages have risen to prominence for instigating action against unfair farming laws. 

            At one point during the protests, the Indian government told women at the frontlines to go back home, but many of them resisted these demands.[7] Women of different ages have risen to prominence for instigating action against unfair farming laws. One of these women include Nodeep Kaur, a 23-year-old Dalit Punjabi activist and university student who actively spoke about the importance of women’s labour in farming and the corrupt farming laws. Kaur is Sikh Punjabi Dalit, a member of a lower caste group in Punjab. While Sikhism does not recognize the caste system, it remains a destructive part of the cultural and social order throughout India — even Jaspreet and I have resisted the ridiculous attempts to uphold caste ideas in Canada.[8] But in India where the caste system remains firmly entrenched, Dalits have little power, and the government mistreats them. Sadly, Kaur was arrested at a protest, taken into a jail where she was violently abused, and sexually assaulted by the Indian police.

As 23-year-old Punjabi women ourselves, it’s hard for Jaspreet and I to express the pain, frustration, and disappointment when we think about Kaur because she is so similar to both of us. At the same time though, we are inspired by how she organizes to take care of her community. I have a sense that Toor feels the same way, especially after she created a stunning image of Kaur holding a protest banner in the air as she stares with calm determination back at the viewer while police attempt to violently silent the protesting women behind her. I find comfort in this thoughtful homage to Kaur because Toor refuses a disparaging gaze that might victimize Kaur, and instead chooses one that sees her as an activist and community worker who will use her voice to break down an oppressive system.

            For Jaspreet and me, it has been extraordinary to watch as Sikh Punjabi women support each other either at the frontlines of protests or through their artwork. Oftentimes, the kind of patriarchal and misogynist values that permeate through Sikh Punjabi culture renders the lives of our bibis, nanis, masis, mummis, Bhuas, didis,[9] and moms meaningless. Out of frustration and anger, Jaspreet and I often discuss where we think this comes from— possibly the idea that men pass on the family’s name to their children, or the outdated, sexist dowry/bride price practice where a bride’s family is required to pay a groom’s family when the couple married. Regardless of where it comes from, many Punjabi and Indian women can tell long stories about the excitement around the birth of a son versus the tears that flow when a daughter is born. I remember when my mother and sisters told me about the many family members who breathed a sigh of relief when my younger brother was born after my parents had three daughters. I can tell story upon story of my friends and family members who are expected to cook, clean, take care of their families, or accept excuses about their brothers’ and fathers’ bad behaviour. This disdain for daughters and the obligations that they must fulfill begins long before women are born and become firmly entrenched in how women develop relationships with other women, too.

I have met many Indian women who ignore, mistreat, and gossip about other women in and outside of their families. Quite frankly, my friendship with Jaspreet feels unique; we strive to support and love each other throughout our careers, not spread rumours about one another. I call Jaspreet and confide in her about my problems; she calls me when she needs to feel inspired. That’s why we feel so encouraged when we see women protesting together while uplifting one another. It is indicative of the possibilities of a relationality built on love and care, disrupting patriarchal systems that seep into our relationships and prevents us from seeing ourselves as necessary for our growth. I see this possibility so clearly in Toor’s Healing Hug (2020), a work that envisions two Brown women lovingly resting on each other as they sit in beautifully adorned Indian clothing. This piece reminds me the most of my friendship with Jaspreet when we work together and talk about the many things that concern us— something I wish I would see more often in our community.

Ravina Toor, Knowledge is Power. 2020. Courtesy of the artist.

            To say that the Sikh Punjabi community globally is struggling right now would not even remotely capture the pain and sadness that has been filling us recently. The farmers’ protest is the result of longstanding historical and social issues that continually neglects and oppresses Sikh Punjabi people. It is one of the reasons why my family left Punjab even earlier than Jaspreet’s family. In Brampton, Ontario, where Jaspreet and I attended high school, Sikh Punjabis have been among the most impacted by COVID-19, living in areas where the positivity rates of the infection reached up to 1 in 5. COVID-19 has been even more disastrous for people living in India, many in Brampton and around the world are afraid for their families’ lives. Even more recently, a White man in the United States terrorized a FedEx facility, shooting and killing seven workers including three Sikh Punjabi workers— an attack that many have been suspicious of being racially motivated.[10] I know it has been hard for so many Sikh-Punjabis to continue working when it feels difficult, but I am also reminded of the scholars, like Dr. Simran Jeet Singh, who write to help us make sense of what is happening to our families and friends.

If we push to become aware of what is happening in our communities, post about it on our social media, and find creative ways to ensure people know about our work, then we will be able to make a bit of difference. And as much as we want people to know about the problems our communities face, we also need the wonders of our culture, language, and religion to be known. In our sadness and hardships, we always find resiliency, strength, power, and care from our cultures and traditions. In Sikhism, we call this charhdi kala, meaning always in high spirits. And so, I end this article on a note of positivity: I dream of a space where we can strive to care for others, looking inward to see how we can be in relation to others. I dream of a space that creates more space for Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) and other marginalized communities. I imagine that this space looks a lot like Toor’s Knowledge is Power (2020).

[1]. Singh, Simran J. “The Farmers’ Protests Are a Turning Point for India’s Democracy—and the World Can No Longer Ignore That.” Time, February 11, 2021. https://time.com/5938041/india-farmer-protests-democracy/.

[2]. Petersen, Hannah E. “Greta Thunberg effigies burned in Delhi after tweets on farmers’ protests.” The Guardian, February 4, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/04/greta-thunberg-effigies-burned-in-delhi-after-tweets-on-farmers-protests.

[3]. Singh, https://time.com/5938041/india-farmer-protests-democracy/.

[4]. Ibid.

[5] Shivji, Salimah. “Burdened by debt and unable to eke out a living, many farmers in India turn to suicide.” CBC News, March 30, 2021. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/india-farmers-suicide-1.5968086.

[6]. Jones, Ryan P. “Indian community holds drive-by rally in solidarity with protesting farmers.” CBC News, January 20, 2021. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/indian-farmers-solidarity-protest-1.5867998.

[7]. Bhowmick, Nilanjana. “‘I Cannot Be Intimidated. I Cannot Be Bought.’ The Women Leading India’s Farmers’ Protests.” Time, March 4, 2021. https://time.com/5942125/women-india-farmers-protests/.

[8]. “Nodeep Kaur: Jailed Dalit activist, 25, granted bail by India court.” BBC News, February 17, 2021. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56178997.

[9]. Punjabi words for paternal grandmother (bibi), maternal grandmother (nani), maternal aunt (masi), paternal aunt (bhua), sister (didi).

[10]. Smith, Casey, and Rick Callahan. “Indianapolis’ Sikh community calls for U.S. gun reforms after FedEx shooting.” Global News, April 18, 2021. https://globalnews.ca/news/7767168/fedex-shooting-sikh-community-us-guns/.

Jess MacCormack’s SHAME SHAME, Go Away Illustrates the Invisible

Jess MacCormack, SHAME SHAME, Go Away, 2020. Photo courtesy of the artist. ID: A colourful book resting closed on a wooden table, its front cover facing up. The book’s title reads “Shame Shame Go Away” in hand-painted letters with the author’s name, Jess MacCormack, neatly painted below. The title is written on the back of a blue hand with bright red fingernails painted in watercolor. The backdrop of the cover is a juicy pink and a few leafy plants grow out from the edges of the cover. Half of a skull peers out from the spine of the book and a rainbow shoots across it to the opposite corner of the book. 

By Rebecca Casalino

Trigger and Content Warning: trauma, sexual assault, police violence, and mentions of medical procedures and suicide.

Settler Canadian culture can be summarized in one word: silence. Many difficult topics like mental health, trauma, and gender identity are considered taboo and continue to be policed by social norms and ‘politeness,’ stigmatizing these very real experiences. These cultural aspects are supported and enforced by colonial police forces and medical institutions. These topics become the monsters living under our beds; always there, always hidden just beneath, seen by children and invisible to adults. Jess MacCormack’s book SHAME SHAME, Go Away grabs these monsters by their ankles and pulls them out from under the covers into the light of day. That being said, please take the time to steady yourself before reading this review (and Jess’s book) and make space for your own emotional needs.

Jess MacCormack, SHAME SHAME, Go Away, 2020. Photo courtesy of the artist. ID: White hands holding a book open on a wooden table. These pages have blocks of printed text and painted imagery. A group of three figures in conversation is repeated twice on the left page. In the second iteration, one figure pushes another to the side as they accept a gift. On the right “Empathy” is painted in cursive over a patch of white that covers a grey face with red cheeks and lips. Three little hearts rise above their bald head. A hand reaches down from the top of the page with blood-red nails.
Jess MacCormack, SHAME SHAME, Go Away, 2020. Photo courtesy of the artist. ID: White hands hold the book open on a wooden table. These pages have blocks of printed texts with painted text and imagery surrounding it. A bald head is peaking up from the bottom of the page, their eyes are rimmed with blue and they are holding cursive text that reads “help us” above their head. The opposite page is a grey stylized torso with red pigment accenting nipples, bellybutton, crotch, knees, and elbows. A block of text is in a white circle in the center of the torso.

SHAME SHAME, Go Away is written and illustrated by MacCormack, a Vancouver-based artist, activist and educator invested in queer politics, mental health, embodiment, and decriminalization.  Dedicated to their late friend Mia Rose Cameron, a teenager who died by suicide, SHAME SHAME, Go Away shares MacCormack’s experiences to bring light to the impacts of childhood trauma on people’s mental health and the damaging effects of medical and [in]justice systems.

SHAME SHAME, Go Away begins with the story of a series of police encounters. At age six little Jess presents a hand-written book to the police, MacCormack writes that they were “Eager to please [the cops] with my extensive knowledge.”[1] The small book outlines details of their sexual assault and lists the names of other girls who were abused. A small green puzzle piece, which had been a gift from their abuser, was taped in the book as proof. This is written out in the first two-page spread of SHAME SHAME, Go Away in a stylized hand-written font, rotating in colour across paragraphs. Within this first spread, two floating faces look back at the reader with wide eyes framed by arched brows, their mouth is in a soft grimace as the black watercolour bleeds out to meet a rim of red. Two pools of black pigment make nostrils and thick black lines frame wide blue eyes like clumpy mascara. Fingertips bleed into grey skin and stylized black lines form deep nail beds as two hands reach in to touch the pages. Even with details of the assaults written out as proof, it was not enough to convince the Canadian [in]justice system this man was not some imaginary monster under their bed. MacCormack writes: “He got two months in jail. And when he got out, he stalked us. After a few years, everyone seemed to have forgotten I was abused at all.”[2] He was never charged for crimes against Jess, as they were considered “too young” to know what had really happened and they might be “making things up.” It is no wonder why most people choose to not report their assaults at all.

Jess MacCormack, SHAME SHAME, Go Away, 2020. Photo courtesy of the artist. ID: White hands hold open a book on a wooden table. This spread is mostly illustrated, with some text, and is all hand-painted using watercolour. Blue hands with red knuckles and nails reach up from the bottom edge of the book. Leafy plants grow from their fingertips and along the edge of the pages. Two faces that are blue and red, with horns are crying, are accompanied by a pair of red apples and toothy skulls. Snakes and grey horned figures, with red accenting their eyes, nipples, and crotches. A starry sky is painted in the upper corner. One page reads “triggered”. The other says “i’m not dead i’m hiding.”

SHAME SHAME, Go Away feels like the second iteration of MacCormack’s book that they made as a child, in the sense that they are reaching out to explain what has happened to them and to the people they care for. In presenting their personal narratives, readers are freed from the constraints of medicalized terminology and language so often associated with research around mental health, childhood trauma, and sexual assault. MacCormack tells their own story, in their own way, making space to explain, understand, and process dissociative identity disorder (DID) from the perspective of their lived experiences instead of the sweeping terms that doctors, and medical writing present such personal realities. MacCormack lists parts that make up themself in SHAME SHAME, Go Away: an outgoing teenage girl, a protective boy, an anxious six-year-old as well as other parts and fragments to explain their experience of DID to readers. MacCormack makes room for all their parts amongst drawings of human and cat faces painted in greys. On the more monochrome pages spot colour stands out, bleeding red pigment marks mouths and genitals. Blue eyes look back at the reader, the watercolours extending like outstretched fingers. “feel” is written lightly in watercolor, so is “help me.” The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) has historically been harmful to queer people, women, Black people, Indigenous folks, and communities of colour, yet it remains as the de facto resource for doctors, patients, and loved ones to learn about illnesses. SHAME SHAME, Go Away becomes a tool for preventing further shame by sharing experiential knowledge through creative, affective, and personalized means, instead of universalized (isolating and stigmatizing) medical terminology.

Jess MacCormack, SHAME SHAME, Go Away, 2020. Photo courtesy of the artist. ID: White hands holding a book open on a wooden table. The page on the left is all hand-painted. “they won’t believe us” is written over a starry sky at the top of the page framed by two grey-horned figures. Below is a pair of red-rimmed eyes with tears streaming past a nose and mouth. A grey body with red veins running down its neck and legs lays in a pool of blue water surrounded by grass and leafy plants. Above the figure hovers a toothy skull. On the right page, a horned demon hangs upside down with tears coming out of its horns. A block of printed text is in the center of the page. Beneath the text is a grey skull with two rainbows shooting out of its head on either side. Two blue hands with red nails are on either side of the skull and leafy plants grow from the edge of the page.

Women, trans and non-binary bodies are not welcome within medicine. We come with too many complications, too many differences to cis men for whom these institutions are built for.[3] Our concerns of pregnancy, miscarriage, and abortion are rumours in hallways or secrets wrapped in shame. These realities have a far greater impact on Black and Indigenous folks, as well as communities of colour, within the medical systems on Turtle Island (North America) because of institutional racism. Jess details their experience of being pregnant at twenty, going through the abortion without anesthesia, and the fallouts of the first procedure. MacCormack writes “I’d realized it was a botched procedure when I started hemorrhaging at work. The manager said there was no one to cover me. I couldn’t leave.”[4] I gag on the story with Jess as we try to understand this trauma.

SHAME SHAME, Go Away deals with many forms of trauma. Reading MacCormack’s experience resurrects stories I had buried long ago. Stories of loved ones’ sexual assault and violence I had kept in fear and paranoia. My own stories are made real again with old screenshots and lists of witnesses hidden in my computer. (I remember disclosing to a friend the next day, I was blushing in my naivety, but her face was angry and serious. It wasn’t until years later while listening to #MeToo stories I realized what had happened to me was attempted sexual assault.)[5] These experiences are tattooed on my skin and it surprises me how invisible they are to everyone else. MacCormack knows this powerful invisibility, as they write: “I like how they dust powder on the walls and it makes the prints of his fingers appear. They should brush our bodies.”[6] My bound copy of SHAME SHAME, Go Away is a physical reminder of these hard truths and realities people seem so eager to erase. A skull wraps around the spine of the book, one eye peers at the reader on the cover, a little horned figure dances on its head at the spine and its toothy grin stretches onto the back cover. Sitting on my bookshelf the skull looks back at me tracing invisible lines with its pages, making real what others hope to bury.

This article corresponds with the event that took place on April 25, 2021 in collaboration with the London Ontario Media Arts Association (LOMAA) “Jess MacCormack in Discussion with Rebecca Casalino.” You can grab a copy of SHAME SHAME, Go Away on Jess MacCormack’s website.

[1] Jess MacCormack, SHAME SHAME, Go Away, Hemlock Printers, (Vancouver: 2020).

[2] MacCormack, SHAME SHAME, Go Away.

[3] Roman Mars and Caroline Criado Perez, “Invisible Women,” 99% Invisible, Episode 365, July 23rd 2019, Last Accessed May 17th 2021, https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/invisible-women/.

[4] MacCormack, SHAME SHAME, Go Away.

[5] Even writing this here seems silly but then I walk myself through the whole night and it all becomes very serious.

[6] MacCormack, SHAME SHAME, Go Away.

Trap Crop: Discussing Money and Art with Kimberly Edgar

Kimberly Edgar, fruit/soil, 2021. Photo courtesy of the artist.

By EA Douglas

Making a living as an artist is a well-known challenge but living with chronic illness compounds the issue. Kimberly Edgar is one of the coolest artists working in Canada today and through cavernous illustrations and comics, they explore the landscapes of chronic illness and mental health. Their comic The Purpose won Best Comic from the Broken Pencil Zine Awards in 2019. To support themselves, Edgar also runs The Forager’s Club, an accessories and home goods shop selling designs with plants they have personally encountered. With their latest work fruit/soil being published by Moniker Press, I was fortunate to talk to Edgar about the connection between making work and getting paid last month.

EA Douglas: One of my favourite quotes is, “Nobody needs debt less than an artist” and I also know that being sick is expensive AF. What’s your experience been like pursuing a career as an artist while living with chronic illness?

Kimberly Edgar: It’s been interesting! Especially since a lot of my chronic illnesses were only diagnosed recently, I didn’t realize how much certain things were affecting me. Generally, I always had side jobs, which is a common thing for a lot of artists. Many successful and famous artists have had day jobs and that’s totally respectable. Not everyone wants to make money or make a living off of being a full-time artist. A lot of people find that changes the way they create art and that’s totally fine. 

The problem is, [that] I only have one real skill and that is making things. I mean, I have other skills but I’m not able to do them consistently because of a lot of chronic illness things. [For example,] I used to do [the] cleaning at hotels which I quite liked because it felt like honest work. I felt like I was doing something physical but then my body stopped being able to do it. Between my autism and my ADHD and the brain fog, I started forgetting what I was doing [and] my memory [caused] issues with having a day job. I became bad at the job and would forget important things, so I stopped being able to [work at that job.]

Outside of a capitalist construct of money, if I didn’t have to work to live or have money to live, I would be using my time to make art anyway. Not necessarily to make money but to use my resources to create art, to create connections. But I don’t have resources if I don’t have money in this world. There is a stress to make a living so I can continue to do the things that I love, which is making art.


The chronic illness thing has made it so I can’t have a side job. That has definitely been an issue because of my issues around work, I have gone into a lot of debt as well. On the flip side when I couldn’t find a job to save my life the silver lining [was it] pushed me to start making money off of my art. 

I started a business doing commissions and pet portraits for people. I was desperate and I was taking anything that I could monetize but it did give me a certain amount of business sense and helped me survive. It helped me learn the avenues that I could make money off of with art. Not that that’s the main thing but how do I make this practice sustainable? And sustainability does mean being able to support myself.

The Purpose by Kimberly Edgar Cover. Photo courtesy of the artist.

EAD: A lot of your comics are available for free on the Internet, which seems counterintuitive as a wanting-to-support-myself-as-an-artist’s-move. What’s driving that decision? 

KE: On the one hand I want to support myself and on the other hand I believe in accessibility. I realize that the goal of my comics currently is less about making money and more about the spreading of ideas and sharing stories. 

If my goal [were] to make money with the comics, I wouldn’t necessarily put them out for free. However, if people read them and they like them, sometimes they buy a physical copy. On top of that, my long-term goal with comics is to get a publishing deal, [in order] to get a publishing deal people have to have read your stuff. There is a sense of [a long-term goal.] If I’m selling comics for $20, with the amount of money it takes to make them, I’m barely breaking even on that. Selling physical books is not going to get me anywhere.

EAD: You want to stay relevant and accessible.

KE: Exactly. What I realized is that by making this sort of comics and putting them out I’m not making that much money off of them, it’s very much a labour of love. However, if I get good enough, I’m hoping that people will give me a publishing deal for my graphic novel.

EAD: If there are any publishers out there reading this interview…

KE: Yes! Wink, wink. Even with big publishers, nobody is making a killing off of graphic novels, but there are advances, which I could live off of for a little bit which [would be similar to] a grant. [From] what I have seen with people who are artists, it seems the way people make money [through] book deals [is by gaining] notoriety. [With] that, you get jobs, or you get opportunities to do art shows. [It’s] getting known that eventually yields jobs.

I’ve been finding this in a small way in the past year. I’ve been working at being an artist for 7 years and I feel this year it’s paid off, in 2020. 

[While] My practice has changed a lot, eventually, the momentum builds and there’s an upward thrust. Right now, I’m finding in small ways now that once you get one thing you start getting other things. 

fruit/soil risograph publication by Kimberly Edgar. Courtesy of Moniker Press.

EAD: How do you manage the precarity of an inconsistent income as a chronically ill artist?

KE: Up until about a year ago it was “not well.” I think there’s some intergenerational trauma around poverty in my family lineage, there’s been a lot of poverty-related issues. 

I grew up with a lot of unintentional financial stress which moulded my ability to handle financial stress. I’ve gone to therapy for it. I didn’t realize until this year when I got out of that stress how much it affected me, and how much it affected my mental health which is another part of disability and chronic illness. The fact that I couldn’t hold onto a job because of my disabilities added to that. [It felt like] “I’m never going to be able to make a living because I’m autistic and have chronic pain and ADHD. But I also obsessively make art and managed to create something that is now finally afforded a bit of stability. I’ve been able to get grants to help to smooth out the times between contracts and freelancing. 

When I finished art school, I made the specific commitment to myself that I would not apply for unpaid work unless it was specifically beneficial to me as a foot in a door, or if it was a project I really believed in. 


EAD: If it was in-line with your values in a way that would engage an audience? I have a similar mentality. 


KE: I also go into opportunities assuming I’m going to get paid and asking for payment.

EAD: Good for you! I’m okay with free labour when it’s explicitly an organization that has significant overlap with what I’m already doing, there’s a community-building aspect to the unpaid work thing.

KE: I have to remember that sometimes unpaid work is community building, as long as you choose to do it. No one should be forced to do unpaid work or feel like they have to do it. But, if you’re choosing to do it as a donation, “I’m gifting this work to you” can be a beautiful thing.

For example, I do hate design contests because it just makes everyone do free labour and the company gets to choose your favourite design. It’s exploitative. 

What I like to do is look at the career of the people who have what I want, or that are interesting, and try to trace back how they [got] there. Was it because they won a competition? Did they win an award? I try to see [the] avenues. I find people whose careers I am interested in, to my knowledge, I don’t think they got where they did from winning a competition.

EAD: Let’s talk about The Forager’s Club, an accessories and home goods shop that sells your custom designs. I remember one time you said something like, “These pins aren’t my art.” How do you separate, mentally and creatively, the designs you make for The Forager’s Club and the work you do as an artist? 

Kimberly Edgar. An assortment of Forager’s Club pins. Photo by Mel Naef courtesy of the artist.

KE: They overlap quite a bit obviously. I see the Forager’s Club as a project in design. I am thinking specifically of the aesthetic of the thing I am making and I am making something beautiful. There is meaning behind it in terms of the plants I represent, I do feel a spiritual connection to these plants and it’s a way of giving thanks to the specific species I am interested in. However, it is also about teaching myself design. Through that, I’ve been able to get design contracts. 

I do illustration but more than that I do design work. I’ve become the person who designs pins in the Yukon. People who want custom pins for their business or organization [come] to me. [The Forager’s Club] sells things and it acts as a portfolio of the things I can design.

Design is making something that has a very specific purpose. The Forager’s Club in that sense isn’t my visual art, it is my design work. I don’t have a conceptual basis for it in the same way. It’s a commercial practice, I’m thinking very differently [about] it in terms of marketing, commercial viability. They’re objects [so] I charge the price that they’re meant to be. It’s not like books where I’m selling an idea. It’s a pin, everyone pays retail price. 

EAD: Do you ever find that the marketability of The Forager’s Club bleeds into your artistic process?

KE: It’s like a trap crop for the pests. The Forager’s Club is my trap crop for stress about money. Then I don’t really think about it in my personal work. You have a crop that attracts all the pests [in this case financial worries], so they don’t go to your prize crop [my artistic practice]. Any worries I have about finances or what people would like all go into The Forager’s Club and not into my personal work.

EAD: That’s a fascinating way to handle the money/art problem.

KE: There’s also the fact that I’m starting to make money off of my work via grants and approaching my work honestly and authentically is [better]. I’m trying to lean into that and not let [financial worries] stress me out.

EAD: I think it’s better to do your own thing and when it fits within a theme, submit. If not, keep rolling.

KE: I’ll apply [for grants] if the theme is aligned with something that I’m already doing. Sometimes if the theme is a little off-center it can be an interesting way to push your way in a different direction, but again if I’m not getting paid to make work different from my art, I’m not going to do it. That being said, there are times when I’ll break my own rules.


Kimberly Edgar’s latest work fruit/soil is available for pre-order through Moniker Press. For more information on The Forager’s Club visit their shop.

Centering Play: In Discussion with Semillites

Semillites. trans self-portrait #13. Image courtesy of the Artist.

Interview by Adi Berardini

Originally from Central México, Semillites Hernández Velasco is a Brown and trans non-binary visual artist based in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam Nations. With a playful approach, their bright illustrations explore queerness through erotic imagery. Whether it’s a self-portrait with devil horns or a steamy threesome depicted in coloured pencils, Semillites’ work unabashedly depicts sexual intimacy, often with a touch of humour.

Additionally, Semillites has recently begun teaching self-portraiture workshops that prioritize LGBTQ2+ Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour. In the following interview, they speak more of their inspiration from trans musicians and getting in touch with one’s younger self to express creativity.

Could you talk more about your influence of “looking for your path through your art practice” and how your practice is tied to immigrating from México to Canada?

I think there is a connection between the two but I’m still trying to find out what that connection is. I come from a family that has migrated over generations and so migration was always a necessity and a solution to survive. For me, when I decided to migrate to so-called Canada and Vancouver, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I knew I was looking for some answers. When I arrived here, I realized that the answers weren’t outwards but inwards, so the way I started to get all these answers was through my artwork. Through drawing and painting, I felt like I was drawing with my ancestors and through that process, I began to know myself better. It’s a path that I feel is no longer linear, it’s more of an inward, healing process.

For me, it’s about taking the gaze out of the equation and saying, I am my own eyes and I see myself through my own eyes.

You explore self-portraiture in a variety of iterations through your art practice. Can you speak further about what self-portraiture means to you and the use of archetypes to explore sides of yourself through art?

I think self-portraits are a way to create representations in comparison to portraits in Western art that have been used to create representations of women, of racialized folks, of queer people, or the “others.” For me, it’s about taking the gaze out of the equation and saying, I am my own eyes and I see myself through my own eyes. And growing up and now, I feel like I still struggle to see representations of Brown and trans people. [For this reason], I consciously started to create representations of what I wanted my body and my skin to look like and doing it in a celebratory way and also an honest way. I think some of my self-portraits are wittier and funny and some are darker and [explore] a range of emotions. I think self-portraiture allows you to create your own representation and to see how much you grow and change throughout the years. It’s a very beautiful experience to see all of [your] progress and not just in a linear way.

Semillites. 24: can i get some f*cking privacy? Image courtesy of the Artist.

You explore queerness, gender, and sexuality playfully through your illustrations. Can you expand further about your use of playfulness and the erotic? In what ways do you find playfulness can create an avenue to talk about difficult topics?

I take a lot of inspiration from my cousin who draws and she’s now thirteen years old. When she was younger, we used to draw together, and the way she saw the world mesmerized me. The lack of perception and the lack of constructs she had really inspired me. When I went back to my drawings it was the same things, traces everywhere and colours everywhere. I started to think of the beauty in imperfections and creating art that was closer to that, towards what we did as kids. I think as adults we don’t play enough. We don’t let ourselves do the things that we did as kids, use curiosity, use the colours, and draw on the walls. I think the world would be a better place if we played more often. For me, the solution to unlearn these things is the same way we learn through school-like exercises, through drawing, and stuff like that. I think it’s going back to when we were younger before ideas were glued into our minds. I think it’s a tactic I’m trying to use—I don’t know if it’s working or not but at least I know it works for me because it brings me back to who I was when I was a kid. Especially in the art world where we see art on canvas, art on paper, art in a very specific form I think that when we create outside of that, the possibilities are endless.

Semillites. protect trans lives. Image courtesy of the Artist.

Do you think that art can play a role in social change? How do you find your illustrations intersect with social change and empower the community around you? 

I believe in my responsibility towards the community of the place that I live right now. I think I have a responsibility towards everything that surrounds me, the people that surround me, the trees, plants, and the land. I also feel like I have a responsibility to respond to the trans community and towards people in México also. I always struggle with thinking [about] who am I talking to and which community am I molding and changing. I think that as artists we have a huge pressure to think that our art can change the world on a global scale, but I think that the most change that [I can create] is when someone who has an experience closer to mine comes to me and says, “Hey I saw something of my myself in that drawing that you did,” or “That drawing made me smile.” Something as small as that to me is so beautiful.

Because I’m an introvert I don’t seek community with that much enthusiasm, I mostly do it online. Although lately, I have been trying to take more direct action. A friend of mine asked me if I wanted to do a self-portrait workshop [which] I said yes to. She got the funding for it and I’ve been doing that over the last two weeks. This is a way I can directly share the tools that I have learned and that I have acquired thanks to the privileges that I also have. I think it’s also about that, debunking the art scene and sharing all the tools that we can for the people who went to art school, who had access to education, who speak two languages, and who have more privileges. I think it’s about sharing and also uplifting the people that we have around us.

It has been a good experience for me to relearn some of the things that I thought I knew but also to connect with people while drawing because I usually do it by myself at my desk with my music. Having other people witness what you’re doing is a different dynamic but a very beautiful dynamic.

Semillites. queer lactose-free fantasy. Image courtesy of the Artist.

Who are some other artists that inspire or influence you?

I look up to artists across Turtle Island from different disciplines! The drawings of Syrus Marcus, the lyrics of Backxwash, the words of jaye simpson, the voice of Luisa Almaguer, the story-telling of Tajliya Jamal, the vulnerability of Lee Lai, the colors of Chhaya Naran, the unapologeticness of Iki Yos Piña, among many other Brown, Black and Indigenous artists!

I have also been immensely inspired lately by trans musicians and singers, especially trans women. I listen to Luisa Almaguer when I’m drawing, and I feel like my drawings flow very differently—I feel very much accompanied by her.

Do you have any other recent or upcoming projects you’d like to discuss?

I’ll still be giving the workshop and will start another series of workshops that are accessible and some are free for trans People of Colour. I am also working on a Snakes and Ladders game, that’s kind of where I’m moving towards with my art. I’m trying to go from prints and nice things that you can put on your wall to things that you can use. As I was telling you, I think playing is so important to me, so I want to incorporate that—games and art. Hopefully, in a few months I’ll be releasing the game.

What is your process like making a game versus a print? Is it a lot of different components?

It kind of reminds me of printmaking and bookmaking since you have a lot of different things to line up and you have to make sure you know the paper is the right size and format and everything. First, I was doing the board [holds up the board over zoom]. I was doing this with the circles and went ahead and did a [first draft] version with some colours. The format is one thing, and images are the other.

For the images, I wanted to do things that I wanted to draw, things that I like that remind me of pleasure and joy. That’s what I wanted to do with this game, explore some of the ideas that I had, but without having to mention them. I just wanted to subconsciously put ideas into people’s minds about fat bodies being beautiful, trans people being happy, and the scissors.

I think there’s that element of the prohibited as well, with sexuality being such a prohibited topic that we don’t get to discuss other than in seminars kind of like sex education. I think conversations about sexuality and gender happen way more organically through our lived experience in a less hierarchal way—it’s more of a horizontal way.

You can check out more of Semillites’ work on their website and Instagram. The next session of self-portraiture workshops will be starting April 3rd at 10 AM PST.

Josiane Vlitos: Illustrating Environmental Awareness

Josiane Vlitos. Feminist Editorial Illustration, 2020. Image Courtesy of the artist.

By Juilee Raje

As we make our way through the last quarter of 2020, most of us are growing accustomed to turning our screens on around midday and intuitively scrolling through informative graphics peppered across social media. Some offer new developments and tips on how to run alongside, rather than into, the mouth of a stealthy virus which has been slithering into our communities overnight. Conversations bounce back and forth between anti-maskers and compassion fatigue. As most of the world is recovering from sheltering in place, the residue of an impulse to collect vast bits of information from various sources and then retreat deep into ourselves remains. 

In survival mode, it can feel familiar and comforting to circle certain questions while avoiding larger, or more difficult ones about our planet and violent interactions with environmental diversity—preventable measures often ignored most by people who have the power to implement them. Journalist and scientist Sonia Shah, who authored the book Pandemic in 2017, explains that rather than a reductionist approach of framing ourselves simply as victims of a foreign invasion, we should reconsider environmental and social policies—such as deforestation and a failure to resolve a persistent housing crisis among vulnerable communities—which are the real culprits behind harmless microbes developing into irreversible outbreaks. Indigenous scholar and environmental activist Melissa K. Nelson refers to the Ojibwe edgewalker and tidewalker trickster figure Nanabozho to explain the urgency of cultivating marginalized ecological biodiversity, and that our relationship to nature should be regenerative and reciprocal. Having truthful understanding of the communities and animals that thrive in our inherited environment, and the complex challenges they face at the hands of other humans, is the first step to influencing policy and strengthening inter-social well-being. 

In these times, mindful image-making is vital in allowing more people to flip to the same page faster. Illustration is an essential artistic practice that has the ability to compartmentalize issues beyond our immediate realm of understanding, especially when it comes to rapidly evolving topics. Around the beginning of summer, I interviewed North-Vancouver based Illustrator Josiane Vlitos to gain more insight on her research-based art practice and her work around intersectional environmental activism. Vlitos studied Communication Design with a focus on Illustration at Emily Carr University, and has since worked on various children’s books and freelance projects. She is an arts and design educator, as well as the author and illustrator of the picture book Bee Friend. Her endearing characters with carrot-shaped noses and their expressive journeys stem from mindful storytelling and her English roots, and her contemporary style certainly shows an experimental approach to representation.

Josiane Vlitos. Togetherness, 2020. Image Courtesy of the artist.

 Sometimes, a message can be driven further when there is a face associated with the words. A distinctive attribute of Vlitos’s work is her ability to conjure characters which feel simultaneously unfamiliar and familiar; especially in her editorial works. Though there is representation of bodies and faces that don’t often receive enough overt visibility, Vlitos finds a way to avoid reducing them to stereotypes by switching up details of attire and palettes of appearances on a spectrum of realistic skin colour shades to blues, greens, and yellows. Curiously, though they rarely show a relationship to each other or hint at an interpersonal dynamic, their individuality is affirmed when they are shown in very specific contexts of coming together as an intersectional community to spread urgent messages, as seen in Feminist Editorial Illustration (2020) or Togetherness (2020).

Seeing yourself represented in a feminist illustration around topical content can inspire more personal accountability and less political apathy. Vlitos says, “As an engaged citizen, I desperately want to contribute to meaningful social dialogue… Illustration empowers me to participate in these important conversations and allows me to engage with people who might otherwise be disengaged from the discussion.First and foremost, when I’m creating an image with a message, I spend a considerable amount of time on research—images can be powerful, so I need to be sure that my message is grounded in truth.” She explains that though her degree in communication design has equipped her with the skill to distill a few key points of research into an image, fine-tuning work is necessary as social dialogue evolves.

Josiane Vlitos. Bee Friend book page spread. 2019. Image Courtesy of the artist.

The artist borrowed from these values when she wrote, illustrated, and self-published the children’s book Bee Friend at the brink of her professional career. The story is spearheaded by a gender-neutral character named Charlie and pulls young readers’ attention to the issue of colony collapse disorder among honeybees. Vlitos shared some insight on why children’s books are a great vehicle to tackle unfamiliar topics by revealing, “As a child, because of my dyslexia, picture books were my only means of reading to myself. Decades later, I’ve never outgrown their charm, both as a reader and an illustrator.” The severity of CCD has fortunately been on the decline; according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the number of hives lost was halved between 2008 and 2013. Still, as of the last five years, beekeepers see colony loss as a concerning matter that may not be paid attention to due to a skewed stigma of honeybees and lack of public awareness around the role our globalization footprint plays in interfering with pollination.

Josiane Vlitos. Bee Friend book page spread. 2019. Image Courtesy of the artist.

Bee Friend pulls inadequate forage and poor nutrition into focus as a cause of colony collapse disorder. The “cuteness” of the artist’s style takes away the threatening reputation of a honeybee, making it seem more likeable and invoking sympathy, while chipping away at some of the stigma. Though the bee is fleshed out as a mystery and a difficult guest to entertain, its presence in the community is welcomed. The focus leans on Charlie as he engages in trial-and-error in order to learn what is causing the bee to become disempowered and ill. Through tuning into the bee’s reaction to holding a lone flower, the solution is eventually discovered; the book then shifts gears into subtly putting out a call to action to adults and children alike to plant more bee gardens if they are able to do so. While reading aloud Bee Friend to young children, Vlitos engages the bustling class by asking them what flowers and vegetables they are able to identify in a brilliantly illustrated fold-out section. Though it is natural to feel frustration over an initial lack of knowledge or understanding of biodiversity, the character of Charlie illustrates that remaining open, listening to the affected party, and showing reflexivity in his desire to help is the successful approach.

In every form—whether they are erected on the walls in our homes, spread across books and magazines, or present on social media—images undeniably take up space in influencing public perception surrounding an issue. For the visual learners, for disabled individuals, for young learners, and many others, images are more powerful than words alone in creating an emotional and rational impact. During the Black Lives Matter social movement and global pandemic, illustrators are in the position to sketch an accurate portrayal of issues outside of our windows. The good news is, these subjects are not exhaustive and accessible illustration practices make headway for many entry points into engagement. The responsibility of the viewer, however, is to recognize that the images we consume often have short lifespans, and to extend their messages and how they apply to our own practices or routines.

You can view more of Josiane Vlitos’s work on her website or her Instagram.

Tahira Rifath Humanizes Trauma Through Digital Portraiture

hyacinth rupasinghe5
Tahira Rifath. Hyacinth Rupasinghe. Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

By Devana Senanayake

Watching the Easter Sunday attacks unfold on the screens of her TV and smartphone, deeply impacted Tahira Rifath. 

“It was scary and traumatizing. I kept thinking what people at the attacks might have felt,” Tahira says of the violence she perceived as a spectator. 

The Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka that claimed at least 257 lives (including churchgoers and tourists alike), targeted three churches and four hotels, rippled through the country and left it reeling. This is the deadliest attack on the country since the conclusion of the Civil War a decade ago. 

Sri Lanka is a country ripped apart by trauma. Black July and the 1983 Singhalese-Tamil riots are cited as incidents that initiated the twenty-five year long Civil War. 

“I was not alive when the Black July happened but once people start to talk about all those riots, it’s so hard for them and there’s so much anxiety about it,” Tahira says about the country’s inability to reconcile its past history. 

Unlike the victims of Christchurch, Tahira noticed a shift in focus in the Sri Lankan attack. The victim’s lives, achievements, and stories shrank in significance as the government and the media started hunting the back stories of the perpetrators of the attack. 

Stories about the group suspected of organizing the suicide bombings, National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) and the strategist of the entire operation, Zahran Hashim popped up all over social media. Social media, particularly Facebook and Whatsapp groups, have become hubs for misinformation, fake stories and hate speech. Even the death toll initially reported as 359 casualties had been revised to 257 after further consultation. A feeling of uncertainty and doubt plague the country. 

“The people who lost their lives became a distant number. No one spoke about them.” the freelance graphic designer and illustrator says. “These people were more than just a number. They lived full, extraordinary lives. We were not giving them the attention that they needed.”

She began her portrait series by sketching out Ramesh Raju, a 40-year-old, building constructor that had saved the lives of many attending mass at the Evangelical Zion Church in Northeastern, Batticaloa. 

Shantha Mayadunne4
Tahira Rifath. Shantha Mayadunne. Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

Tahira has also sketched Sri Lankan celebrity chef and cookbook author Shantha Mayadunne. Shantha is remembered for her immaculate presence on Sri Lankan TV channels ITN and Rupavahini, dressed in a Kandyan style sari, presenting quick and simple recipes. 

Her daughter Nisanga Mayadunne, a service quality manager and TV presenter had also perished during a family breakfast at the hotel. 

Tahira gained more information about the casualties from organizations attacked on Easter such as Cinnamon Grand Hotel and the Shangri-La Hotel. Miyuru Yasakalum had been employed as a commis chef at the Shangri-La Hotel since October 2017. The ex-scout had also been a tour guide in Sri Lanka.

Miyura Yasakalum
Tahira Rifath. Miyuru Yasakalum. Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

To continue her project amid a storm of inaccuracy,  Tahira consults either a family member or a close friend of a subject before she sketches them. After she finished her first four portraits, she felt the secondary trauma of undertaking such an intense project focused on tragedy. Secondary trauma, sometimes called “vicarious trauma” happens through constant exposure and re-exposure to traumatic stories. Her physical health had been impacted – she contracted a fever and had to press “pause” on the project. 

Despite the impact on her mental and physical health, Tahira is eager to continue. She hopes to celebrate the lives of the victims and simultaneously convey a message to a racially divided country.  “Even though Sri Lanka was voted the “No. 1 Tourist Destination” by Lonely Planet for 2019, people are not really open to different perspectives. I want people to understand and empathize with different beliefs and cultural perspectives,” she concluded.