There is no place like home – Illustrating heritage, race and class through the personal story of international adoption
is the title of my PhD project in Visual Communication towards illustration at Konstfack, Stockholm.
My research explores intersectional illustration methods, showcasing the specificities of sequential storytelling through visual communication,
by making a graphic novel as my thesis.
The thesis is presented as a graphic novel about adoption and “betweenship”, accompanied by a reading guide called The Companion. Through storytelling, text, and imagery, it weaves a personal journey while asserting political agency—advocating for change and working outside of given systems.
With both the graphic novel and its Companion I wanted to make this artistic research accessible beyond academia, carefully adapting language, sources, and references to engage a wider audience.
A couple of concrete examples of values and decisions I work with
when I make the images are:
To work with color, details and ornaments and to work outside grid and bubble systems in order to utilise formats less conditioned by Western and modernist aesthetic value systems.
To defy the idea of one coherent style, and instead mix expressions, styles and systems according to what needs to be narrated.
To let the image carry the weight of the storytelling, letting the written text be a support to the image, and the image not be dependent on the text.
To make key illustrations that showcase a high level of detail, craft and time-consuming qualities.
To work with image registers kin to the romantic, the domestic, the coded feminine, folk, workers and country-side.
To carefully place, layer and be aware of symbolism and image references.
To reference a wide spectrum and diverse types of sources. Academic, commercial, pop-cultural, etc.
Principal supervisor: Professor Sara Teleman
Assistant supervisor: Dr. Moa Matthis
Admitted to: Konstfack
Project period: 2020-spring 2025
You can find a link to my profile at Konstfack here.
The graphic novel is written in English. The Companion is written in Swedish with a temporary English version (to be professionally translated in the future).
The project will be printed in very limited copies for the defence because my goal is to have the entire project published by a commercial publisher.
The thesis will be available online as a pdf. When it is published online, you will find information about it here. Please check back for updates!