Project GRIEF

I had been working on a series of artworks around a central theme for a contest, and I finally finished it on Tuesday. I felt surprisingly little satisfaction, but that might be because I still have tons of work to do.

My mom told me about the contest around May. The contest was held by the Taiwanese Palliative Care Association, asking for comics or illustrated stories about “loss” and “grief” for teenagers. The topic seemed interesting to me, (and the first three places receive money), so I decided to give it a shot.

Because both of my parents work at the hospital, death isn’t an unusual topic for us over the dinner table. I grew up listening to them discussing their patients and the patients’ family members. Still, during the course of the project I could only imagine what it feels like to have someone close to you passing away. After all, the saddest thing that ever happened to me was when my cat died. My mom, on the other hand, lost her father when she was thirteen. She told me she simply felt pointless for a very long time.

I asked her, “So, when did you get over it?”

She said, “I don’t think I ever did.”

example page

Based stylistically on three collages I created previously, the series continued using magazine cut-outs as medium. However I incorporated paint into the new ones while in school. Because I liked the result so much I painted every piece after that.

The new project was in storybook format. Writing in Chinese, especially elegantly without being pretentious, proved to be way more difficult than I thought. My mom ended up helping me with the writing.

The title of the project was, translated literally, “Loss and Pursuit,” which sounds somewhat stupid in English. (Project GRIEF was actually the working title)

Working on this project was time- and energy-consuming, but I think I learned a lot. Besides, I also need a few more artworks that can be potentially used in my college application.