Xueting Yang is a young and promising Chinese illustrator, author of the sweet and introspective book “Et Annet Sted”. The story rises form the meeting of two cultures, the Chinese and Scandinavian one, since she’s at the moment living and studying in Oslo.
Waiting for her next works to be published, we asked her some questions.
How did you start with your drawings and when did you start thinking to work as an artist? Was it something you wished since China or does your choice has to do with Norway?
After graduation from a Chinese university, I wanted to take a master abroad. I studied Industrial design as same as my father. But I always enjoyed making drawings since my childhood, so I applied for a master in illustration. Norway came to my mind since it is both close to culture and nature. My drawings were raw, unpolished and very colourful back then. No one including myself ever took them seriously before I came to Norway.
I imagine being a foreigner in Europe changed your relationship with China, do you still look at China as a strong reference for your work? What influence did Norway have on your drawings?
I am from a small town named Kaifeng in the middle east of China. My hometown is very slow and old with rich historical background. After moving away, that small place started to become heavier in my mind, as the hometown. The same with Chinese culture, I have enough time to ruminate what I used to see everyday. My work shares the core from ancient Chinese poetry and calligraphic drawing. Ancient Chinese were masters of using white space in expression. They used white space in their drawings to stand for water, sky, distance and even time. They also left a lot of white space in between the lines of a poem. Silence has the strongest volume, since it is echo from inside the audiences.
All kinds of Norwegian comic definitely freed my idea about “visual storytelling”. My concept of comics had a big breakthrough. Here I leaned how weird and free comics could be. Since I came to Norway, comics become a new tool to catch and communicate feelings and thoughts, instead of language.
My comic is visual poetry, the born is from China and the flesh is from Norway.
What does the title of the book mean, and what does it refers to?
At Annet Sted means “another place”. This comic is about moving to another place and observing the new place with fresh eyes. But it is neither specificly about Oslo nor Kaifeng. I tried to delete personal life details and catch a more universal experience. So it is simply named “another place”.
Nature and solitude are strong themes of your stories. It seems like you use both as a way to talk about inner being and emotions. I imagine solitude is a way of communicating with nature, rather than a negative feeling, is it?
Being alone is very important for a creator. Creating stories is like making dreams. To process a bit of reality, a bit of wishes, a bit of past and a bit of future, twisted, ungratified, hidden, being deceptiveand very honest at the same time. It is for sure an inner process.
I spent a lot of time in my mum’s hospital garden from my childhood. When she was working, I would play on my own in the garden. In that way I grew up very closely with nature, with plants, insects, flower, roots, trees, season, night and darkness, rain, earth. Those adorable things, they just present when I draw.
Where do the main characters of the “Et Annet Sted” come from, and can you present them briefly? What kind of readers were you thinking of for your book?
There are two main characters in the story, a girl and Shi. The girl is a traveller and she becomes naked after landed at this new place. Shi is a fantacy friend. it is a good listener with silent understanding.
There are also some side characters like thehedgehogs, they present local residences.
This book looks children friendly with the animal characters and fantacy world, but it has many layers of human feelings, not only the sweet part, but also the tough part. So I think it is for all ages who likes poetry.
Hand drawing increases the tenderness and naivety of your work. Have you ever thought of using softwares instead and why hand drawing is so important for you?
I really like the subtle and sensitive changes in hand drawing. It happens unexpected from the hand and the tools.
But in fact softwares paly an important role in my work, although it is not visible. I make drawings by hand then edit them in Photoshop, like coloring and rearrange the layout. Also I delete all the unnecessary parts of the drawing at the last step. Softwares make it possible to draw loose and tie it up later.
What are your plans for the future? Will you continue drawing? Do you have any ongoing project?
Right not I am making a children picture book about a girl searching for her mum in the game hide and seek. She searched through the memories, her father, the tastes, smell, fears, and time. It also has layers of feelings in storytelling.
Authors have different motivations behind their works. In my first and second books, there are my unfilled wishes. I am honest in these staged dreams. But I think it is not enough to only bring out from myself, oneself. I don’t know yet what will be my motivation in the future. This is what I should find out through working.
