Event Info
Cute Nose
Artist Bio
Ro is a multidisciplinary artist and librarian who creates comics...
By Donation
Event Description
Artist Bio
Ro is a multidisciplinary artist and librarian who creates comics focused on themes of identity, often conveying experiences and ideas using elements of the surreal and magical. In 2018, they founded Canada Comics Open Library (CCOL) in Toronto, and they maintain the Canadian Cartoonists Database. Their most recent project is a distro called Lost Doll Comics And Art. Currently, they are completing a graphic novel exploration of Jewish identity and mythologies, through a lens of queerness and experiences of illness, with support from The Canada Council for the Arts.
Exhibition Statement
For the past three years, Ro has self-published a series of comics called Cute Nose. This exhibition features original comic art and clay miniatures made in tandem for this series. Cute Nose Issues 1-3 feature experimental comics that explore mental illness, gender identity, and the artist’s own Jewish identity using themes of cuteness, play, and the physicality of the body.
Miniature clay sculptures were created in communication with comics and illustration work in Cute Nose. These clay sculptures are called “golems” after the legend of the Prague golem. In one version of the story, this creature was said to have been created out of clay and brought to life by Rabbi Loew to protect the Jewish community from harm in the late 16th century. The artist playfully and appreciatively uses the name “golems” because of how they utilized clay to create these small creatures during difficult moments in their life. The medium of clay inspired and enabled the artist to delve into the medium of comics in a gentle way and begin creating the work in Cute Nose.
Comics can convey difficult emotions and experiences in a way that feels impossible to capture in prose. Line tension, detail, colour, subtle visual clues, the relationship between words and images, and the visual gaps can all convey the weight or numbness of experiences such as mental illness, trauma, and grief. Frequently, you can see the creator’s hand in the production of the drawings, line quality, or other storytelling devices in the narrative. In this way, comics are both vulnerable and powerful. Using the queer possibilities of the comics medium, this project was a hopeful exploration of the complex question of what it means for the artist to be queer, secular, and Jewish in our contemporary world, as well as an exploration of their identity utilizing playful cute and grotesque aesthetics.
Thu. January 2nd - Fri. January 24th
2516 Douglas. Victoria BC
In-Person Event
