BACK



The Outsider  process



STATUS


TYPE

GENRE



MEDIA


DATE

LOCATION

Finished
Ready to make books

Book Illustration

#Literature Illustration
#Classic
#Serious

Coloured Pencil
Pastel

07/2021 - 01/2022

Beijing, China
METANOIA is a semi-autobiographical graphic novel set in the high-pressure educational environment of Beijing, China, exploring adolescent experiences across junior high and high school. The story is inspired by my own journey, focusing on a sapphic relationship within girls’ friend circles, and delving into the emotional struggles, confusion, and growth faced by the main character under societal expectations.

Through delicate illustrations, I aim to convey the subtle, complex emotions that words cannot fully express, offering a glimpse into the inner world of a teenage girl. I also employ spatial techniques to hint at underlying emotions, hoping to resonate with readers of all ages, providing empathy and inspiration.

Due to time constraints, I have completed only the initial chapters and key pages for this exhibition. The works will be showcased in two formats: fragmented emotional memories in individual books and an incomplete graphic novel with a linear narrative. I plan to continue expanding this project into a more comprehensive book and create a series exploring different characters' perspectives.

 


PART I
















PART II

Click to view Process+


OVERVIEW

Overview of the project

INSPIRATION: the experience of life in high school

Camus is a writer I came across and loved in high school. I was drawn to him because his work perfectly recreates a sense of dissociation and disconnection from my life in high school. This sense of dissociation and disconnection was born out of the disconnect between the life I was pursuing and the world I was living in, and the absurdity of this disconnect was the beginning of the budding of existentialism in one being.

At the time of my birth, China was just gaining international recognition for its rapid industrial and technological development. This is why the saying "Learn Maths, Science and Chemistry and you can travel the world without fear" was popular at that time, expressing people's admiration for technology and science, and parents' ardent expectation for their children to become technically gifted. In this subtle discrimination, children with good grades were involuntarily sent to study science and technology, while studying art or arts was discriminated against. I was painfully fulfilling the responsibility of being a perfectly obedient top student until I awakened to it, even though I was acutely aware of my talent for art and creativity.


Wanting to study art, I was forced to be trapped in the reality of a superior science class. Day in and day out, facing an environment without any like-minded friends and still having to spend a lot of time and energy studying courses that ran counter to my aspirations, was a constant and silent torture for me. The boredom on the surface of my life and the passion I had nowhere else to turn led to depression, and after talking to my parents to no avail, I knew I had to complete my High School Entrance Examination before I could really change my life and realize my ambitions - I had to get through it in a more determined and positive way. So I was sober enough to keep a daily record of my state and speak to myself so as not to become numbed by the influence of others, and sober enough to continue to complete my school work, in tandem with the fact that it was only later, in the long practice of living, that I was introduced to existentialism and learned that the values I was practising were both existential. This was the germ of existentialism in me.


The core of existentialism is precisely the same: our lives are full of absurdities and we are bound by socially established ethics, morals and rules from the moment we are born. When faced with these rules, some people are completely caught up in them without realizing it; some are aware of the problem or have awakened to it, but choose to obey or mentally escape in the face of the powerful institutional effects; and then there are those who have awakened and choose to resist. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus discusses two ways of resistance for this last category of people, one is suicide ("There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide"), and the other is to transcend life, to construct the idea of the self, to live soberly in the present and to actively confront the absurdities of life.





Copyright @riikiee 2025
 


NEXT PROJECT