Amit is the avatar of illustrator Anuj Shrestha.[break]
Anuj, 32, was born in Kathmandu. “We left for the United States when I was two years old,” shares Anuj, over a telephone interview. It is 8:30 pm in New York, where he currently works and lives. “We moved from California to Oregon, and then to Alaska. I was 11 years old when we settled in Colorado,” continues Anuj who completed his undergraduate studies from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1999.
“It was choosing between career-oriented subjects such as computer science and pharmaceuticals and the creative arts,” he puts in. Anuj began college as a chemistry student and eventually enrolled in the fine arts program.
“I had been keeping a sketchbook for many years, and my parents realized that I was determined to study art,” says Anuj, whose father is a civil engineer.For his BFA final year, Anuj created ‘Kichkanni’—a comic based on the mythical spine-chilling stories of a beautiful and seductive vampire. “It was my first self-published book,” informs Anuj, who has had his work published in The New York Times and The Financial Times (UK). Anuj has also been contributing to Rabid Rabbit, an anthology of comics put together by his peers, since 2005.
“I created a four-page Kichkanni story for the latest and 11th issue of Rabid Rabbit, but it’s very different from the old one,” explains Anuj and laughs, recalling his earlier drawings, “My drawing style has changed a lot.”
The BFA graduate worked in the Bay Area, California, for a year and a half in a children’s software company and moved back to Colorado before deciding to join an MFA program.
“I wanted a program that embraced cartooning and illustration, and joined the School of Visual Arts in New York with a focus on illustration,” he relates. Anuj completed his two-year MFA in 2005 and decided to stay in Queens, New York, living a ‘semi-politicized’ life, as he likes to put it.
“As a Nepali brown person in the US, I’ve had different experiences and I have always been aware of socio-political issues,” he expresses and furthers, “Personal and institutionalized politics not only found its way into my work but I also felt the need to include them. It’s important to be honest in your work.”
From his mockery of popular skin-whitening creams in ‘Super Fair’ and his view of the People’s Movement in ‘Now What’ to his comic series ‘Citizen Waste’ and illustrations of faceless people in ‘Immigrants,’ his images are inherent of social and political commentary, and reflect his awareness of contemporary issues.
“It’s one thing to make a nice or pretty drawing, but you lose interest in it if there’s no personal message,” asserts Anuj. “Super Fair is drawn from Fair & Lovely, and is about the political implications of advertisements, which mentally influence emotions and decisions.”
The telephone static keeps cutting out words repeatedly. The conversation continues with several ‘Sorry, what was your question’ and ‘I can’t hear you’s. We talk about Amit.
Amit is an illustrator too but he does not look like Anuj. In fact, he does not look like a human being. He is pink, has dots for eyes, and does not have a nose or ears.
“I wanted to create a visual metaphor for isolation which is why Amit is an alien-like featureless character,” elaborates Anuj and adds, “Amit feels like a tourist when he goes to Nepal. The story is about alienation, assimilation and the idea of home.”
His illustration series ‘Identity’, which explores the duality of his heritage as a Nepali American, reveals that Anuj is all too familiar with the emotions of Amit. A watercolor named ‘Unzip’ shows a calm Anuj unzipping his own face to expose the nervous featureless character within him. Anuj, whose recent visit to Nepal was in 2003, is the tourist.
Anuj’s avatar appears in many other contexts, outside of ‘The Tourist’. In a sketch titled ‘Stomach’, posted on his blog, Ululation, a human head tries to escape from the alien-like creature, while the latter tries to push him back inside. A text is scribbled onto the side:
What is it? That feeling that rises from the depths? That painful bellow that breaks the chains of restraint? Is it Fear? Is it paranoia? It must be something close to the heart. Something that feels grotesque and intimate. That which burns the lines of alienation and familiarity, I seek to escape it and yet know that it is a part of me.
“Comics are a visual medium that blend texts and images, and the two are equally important,” says Anuj, who struggles to find the balance between the two, and opines, “If the text repeats what the image says, then it’s redundant.”
Anuj’s images are powerful and poignant—with or without words. His illustrations such as ‘Spill’, ‘Submit’ and ‘Lil’ Hijabi’ give the viewers a lot to chew on their own.
While ‘The Tourist’ is a work in progress, Anuj has published two collections of short comics—Ululation and Paliwog.
“I did a short story with a friend on a theme of secret identity called ‘The Twilight’ in March 2009,” he apprises. “We actually decided on the title before the movie came out,” he points out, referring to the blockbuster ‘Twilight’ about vampires. Their story, however, is not a vampire love story but about a boy with super powers.
“I mostly use pen and ink, and occasionally watercolor,” says Anuj.
Apart from working on his own comics, Anuj works freelance for advertising agencies and magazines, making illustrations and storyboards.
“Illustration as a career is a tricky market to find steady job, but it’s possible.” He ends on the encouraging note.
Image copyright © Anuj Shrestha.
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