Friday 20 March 2015

The Arrival, by Shaun Tan


The experience of many immigrants actually draws an interesting parallel with the creative and critical way of looking I try to follow as an artist. There is a similar kind of search for meaning, sense and identity in an environment that can be alternately transparent and opaque, sensible and confounding, but always open to re-assessment. I would hope that beyond its immediate subject, any illustrated narrative might encourage its readers take a moment to look beyond the ‘ordinariness’ of their own circumstances, and consider it from a slightly different perspective. One of the great powers of storytelling is that invites us to walk in other people’s shoes for a while, but perhaps even more importantly, it invites us to contemplate our own shoes also. We might do well to think of ourselves as possible strangers in our own strange land.


A brief vision of the country being left behind, for reasons as mysterious as they are obvious.



Every resident of the new world has their own tale to tell and reasons to give up a life they know for one they don’t. This is one of the more dramatic tales, inspired by accounts of totalitarian persecution: a society in which complex diversity is obliterated in favour of a single “truth”.


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