Comics and Archive Stories

I participated in the panel 'Working with Archives: Approaches, ethics and impact', which brought together four speakers who share experience of working within and interpreting different archival spaces, each concerned with critically engaging with the process.

In my presentation, I described how comics can replicate the process of ‘reading’ archives, using a case study of work I produced in response to the archives of Sheba Feminist Publishers.

I considered how comics could echo 'archival' modes of reading: the work should offer multiple perspectives, maintain contradictions, and support the slippery temporality that is experienced in archives, where the past and future refuse to stay in the places we might expect them to.

A publication, which shares the contributions of the symposium, can be found here:

https://www.colouring-in.com/

"This third issue of 'Colouring In' is the result of an extraordinarily rich and engaging symposium that took place on 9 December 2022 at the University of the Arts London. We are delighted to hereby publish our speakers’ compelling contributions, including invocations of illustration as a conjuring act, reflections on the benefits of presentism, explorations of illustrative methods for articulating non-linear time, and thoughts on grappling with illustration’s own histories of representation. Our most extensive issue to date, it seems that the past will not let us rest..."