Elk Paauw

Artist Statement

My body of work combines semi-autobiographical comics and critical theory to investigate trans ontology and the subject through time. Through mostly black-and-white comics, my drawn narrator doppelganger introduces readers to thinkers and concepts then engages in theorizing through the interplay between text and image. While occasionally engaging with humor, the goal of my work overall is the visualization of thought to mobilize insight regarding the lived experiences of crip/queer and trans individuals.

Typically, I draft my pages on paper then digitally ink, letter, and apply dot gain screentone and other textures on my iPad. From there, I either print and bind my comics in book form or publish online in various configurations that experiment with standards of comics page layout and design. I come from the DIY zine scene in Seattle, so I incorporate the DIY zine ethos into my comics-making practice. My book-making is motivated by horizontal, copy-left knowledge-sharing strategies pioneered by DIY queer indie punk artists and activists enabled by cheap reprographic techniques, aligning amateur/DIY aesthetics (glitter, stickers, hand-binding) with conventional commercial printing and binding techniques. My artistic influences include queer comics artist Alison Bechdel (from Dykes to Watch Out For to her autotheoretical psychoanalytic comic, Are you my Mother?), trans comics artist and diy self-publishing magnate Carta Monir, and the neurotic ramblings of Harvey Pekar. All of these artists play with form as content and engage in representing the self in comics form as interlocutor, and all started making their comics by engaging with local underground art scenes. In my most recent graphic essay [here], I outline how crip/queer temporalities are expressed visually in first-person comics, tying the the theoretical work of Ellen Samuels and Elizabeth Freeman with recent comics and comics scholarship. Through this, I visualize non-linear crip/queer time and its fluid, non-normative chronology using creative, non-linear panel layout, drawing examples from other indie comics artists and my own previous autobiographical work.

I am currently working on my dissertation comic, which is on trans ontology and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Upcoming projects include more graphic essays on crip/queer temporalities that engage with DIY queer/trans autobiographical comics artists from across the globe.