Creating visual journeys
While cobbling together ideas and materials for a display, Visual Journeys *, to be presented in Hillhead Library, my doctoral supervisor Evelyn handed me Shaun Tan’s book “Sketches from a Nameless Land”. This is a companion to his wordless picturebook “The Arrival”.
Being quite fascinated with the meta-fictive elements of literature (or, the creative practices that take place behind, through and within a piece of fiction), I quickly became engrossed in the descriptions of his writing and illustration processes, which has become the focus of Visual Journeys.
The many emotions of departing and arriving
Alongside these preparations, I’m filling my suitcase for an upcoming trip to Canada. I have diligently filled my suitcase with Tonnock tea cakes, canisters of Earl Gray and tattie scones – unfamiliar delights for familiar friends.
I am struck by the range of experience along the continuum of departures and arrivals: some joyful like when I will travel to see an old friend get married on her family’s farm in British Columbia, and some painful, like the experiences of some of the displaced children in this project, often displaced by conflict or human rights violations happening in their home countries.
Symbolism of the suitcase
I noted Shaun Tan’s words on the reoccurring symbol of suitcases in his picturebook; he suggests that suitcases are “the only tangible evidence of a life suspended between a lost homeland and an unknown future”. It seems that the symbol of the suitcase might serve as a strong organising principle for this Visual Journeys exhibit.
* Visual Journeys is a research project lead by my doctoral supervisor Dr. Evelyn Arizpe, which engages refugee, asylum seeker and native Scottish children in questions of migration and identity through the creative use of wordless picturebooks.
