Illustrating Narratives

Rebecca Araujo, illustrator, inspired by narratives, working in london. email: [email protected] All Sketch Work

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quick sketch of my character Nemesis I was going to paint it but I think it works better as a sketch

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Quick sketch

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“Each night different people come again and again and again in the night, and in the daylight. I felt as if vultures were biting me all over my body and that they would bite me until I died.”

The Rohingya  face terrible persecution in Burma, I did this piece a year ago and it seems that only now the world is becoming aware of their plight.

Help Burma and the Rohinyga’s http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=4700113451d8aa734dbd78356&id=b3621bb324

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Water Me. 

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Bliss forest part II and III 

project is finally finished :D 

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Bliss Forest Part I

This piece is inspired by the song Bliss Forest by Olivia Lufkin. I have two more pieces that will accompany it. 

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sneaky peak of some earrings I'm making for the exhibit 

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got some things for the exhibition! Going to sell some postcards (though they're more like small prints)

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My final piece, Girl from Kachin: It is the only piece that is not based off a testimony or from the book Nowhere To Be Home. When I started the project I had wanted to focus on the Kachin state and the conflict, but finding testimonies proved very difficult as the border is closed off to much of the western press, the only things being written were reports and general news articles. This piece was inspired by an article in Time magazine and details the rape of a 7 year old girl. I wanted my piece to show Kachin and how the world is forgetting about these people because the world believes Burma is changing and that any criticism hurts the steps towards change. I wanted the piece to show the threat of the Burmese military against Kachin and the innocent people who live there, the military presence is seen as invisible to the rest of the world outside of Kachin so I wanted to put them in the shadows, I wanted to show some of Kachin too so I added the landscape, the Kachin Hills so that it would be more recognisably Kachin. 

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A few months ago I went to an exhibtion some of my university teachers had put on, one of them Christine McCauley went to Burma following her fathers journey he took in world war 2, she had mountains of sketchbook work and some really interesting images. 

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I was lucky enough to see George Butler talk at Somerset House, I had seen his work previously when I was working on my Bosnia project, he had won an award from the V&A for his illustrative work in Syria. A reportage illustrator he has travelled across the world illustrating people, mainly in places that have been caught up in conflicts he also has illustrations from Burma and Nagaland. He talked a lot about his experiences and trying to create illustrative images rather than photographs and the difficulties of competing with the medium. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ryXonDPNpE

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Somerset house had some interesting exhibits. The first few images are from the Life Now exhibition which shows Rwanda today twenty years after the genocide, it's interesting to see how the people live now and that although there is growth their are still shadows from the past remaining. 

The second set of images are from the Burnt Generation exhibition which shows photography of Iran a country that is seen from western perspectives as radicalised and dangerous. It's interesting to see its everyday settings. The messages the photographers are trying to convey are "isolation loneliness and desolation of youth," a very powerful look at a world that appears so closed off. 

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Ko Mg Mg:

Escaped life in Burma to Thailand only to be sold to various fishermen by people he thought he could trust, bought and sold three times and forced to work in terrible conditions under men who held himself and his friends with little regard. His story and friendship with his friend Aung Soe was one of the few good things in his life. After finally escaping from slavery he sadly is diagnosed with HIV. 

I wanted this piece to reflect the good times Ko Mg Mg had with Aung Soe and a time when they had freedom and hope, but I wanted it also to reflect him now, there is a severe HIV problem in Burma and many have little money to pay for the vital drugs. Ko Mg Mg describes that aid and charity is rarely given to the patients and instead sold or kept by those in charge of the clinic he is staying at. 

Text: "I was angry at the people who'd sold me, betrayed to me, lied to me. A friend is someone who even if they've only got one thing, they will give it to their friend. A friend never takes.  Since I got HIV, I have had no contact with Aung Soe, my best friend. Aung Soe and I had gone to Thailand from Burma together, and he was always by my side. He's my best friend because he has a good mind

He doesn't know that I have HIV. I feel so much shame. My biggest desire is to be cured, so I can support my parents. I want freedom from the disease. "

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Yun:

A Sixteen year old sex worker. She lost her mother who was forced into sex work to aids. After her aunt forced her to leave her kind grandfathers house she was then forced by another aunt into the sex industry. She plans to run away but it's unknown whether she will be safe. 

I wanted to tell Yun's story because she says in the text that she wants it to be known, so I wanted the text to include as much as her story as well as the image. It was a difficult image to plan as I did not want it to become lewd or seedy I wanted to show her industry but also her feelings towards it too and her experiences.  The top drawing was my first attempt but it was drawn before I was collaging and so I decided to revisit it and really tell the story. 

Text: "If I could, I would rewind my life and start over again from the beginning. I wanted to become a doctor one day. I wanted to take care of people and see them get better. She wanted me to become a sex worker, but I didn't know what it was. 

They locked the room from the outside and the man used force to take my clothes off. I was fourteen years old when I lost my virginity.

She had cheated me and just wanted me to work for her. I want other people to know what my uncle and aunt did to me."

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Aye Maung part 2:

My second piece telling the story of Aung Maung who was forced to porter for the army. I wanted to keep the ghostly aspect of the first piece but show more of the things Aung Maung had to see and go through. The silhouettes were not initially planned but I feel they work well with the quote and suggesting the horror that the porter were helpless to do anything but watch. 

Text: "They broke their arms and cut their tongues. Then they hanged them from a tree, and they made the rest of us watch. They wanted us to be afraid, so no more porters would try to run away again. After that we were so afraid."

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Hla Min Final Piece:

Hla Min was kidnapped when he just nine years old and forced to become a child soldier for the Burmese Military, the children were forced to fight and brainwashed into doing whatever was asked of them through various means. Hla Min eventually escaped with a friend and lives in Bangladesh but he cannot reunite with his family as he does not know if they are alive.

Hla Min was always going to be the larger of my pieces and I hope to use him as the larger image for the exhibition at P3. I found it difficult to choose what to illustrate as there were many directions, I settled on showing Hla Min as a child seeing things that a child should not have to see and recognising the shared injustices he was being ordered to carry out. Torn between fear and duty of being a soldier but seeing himself in those that were being harmed. I wanted his image to look towards the audience and almost ask what they would do if they were him. 

Text: "There is a reward for each soldier who catches a child. I saw soldiers abducting young girls, dragging them from their houses and raping them. At that time those girls were like my sisters. They told us that even the children had to be killed if we saw them."