Four visual arts students were featured in the TRU Art Gallery at Old Main in mid-January, focused on storytelling through their work.
The exhibit, called Original Stories, consisted of a diverse display of art styles, narratives and media.
Original Stories was organized by fourth-year fine arts student Charlayna Napoleon, who is also known by her pseudonym, Napcolors. With a focus on storytelling, the artists in this exhibit held a preference for comic-style art which, according to Napoleon, is not appreciated within the world of fine arts.
Faizal Bukhari/The Omega
“It’s kind of taboo,” Napoleon said. “In the art world, comics aren’t really seen as fine art.”
For Napoleon, it was important to bring together these artists and spotlight their work as a way to combat certain prejudices and assumptions around the art form.
“These are all comic artists and they’re working towards their degree in fine arts, but they’re not really able to show that at school because of the standards. I wanted to give them the opportunity to showcase what they do in their everyday life,” she said.
Napoleon was among the four artists whose work was on display. Her series of illustrations follow the adventures of a character named Nap, who is placed at the centre of various fantasy environments. In many cases, these environments are symbolic of real-world events or scenarios in the artist’s life.
“This one is heatstroke,” she said, gesturing to one of her illustrations. In it, a small figure — Nap — lays at the foot of a tidal wave of vibrant blues, purples and oranges.
“I painted it when there was a heatstroke in Kamloops in 2021,” she said.
Soaked in imagery of nature and intense weather, often with one small character facing the vastness of the landscape before them, Napoleon’s pieces are altogether familiar and fantastical.
Augusta Nwuke, otherwise known as Tafn, is another final-year art student whose digital pieces found home in the exhibit. Her display consists of comic-style illustrations inspired by the stories of Mami-Wata, a traditional water goddess in folklore across West Africa and the African diaspora.
“I took a spin on the stories I heard from my grandma,” Nwuke said. “I’m Ijaw, so I live around the water and that’s where my people come from.”
Nwuke’s display, aptly named The Mermaid, follows a scene from her upcoming web comic. The art is bold and turbulent, filled with dark colours, cloudy weather and sharp flashes of light. Her protagonist, garbed in tribal dress and markings, stands central in most pieces and is given the only line of dialogue.
“She’s a siren,” Nwuke explained. “And Sirens are known for having powerful voices. I felt like, in Nigeria, a lot of women don’t have a loud enough voice. So this is a chance to take control, in a sense.”
For Olivia Roberts, a fourth-year fine arts student, her development as a traditional comic/pop artist is non-negotiable.
“When it comes to comic work, I do the traditional process,” she said. “It’s very time-consuming, but I do it because I like working with raw materials. I’ve tried digital art, but I personally prefer the material of paper. I like the feeling of it.”
Roberts’ pieces were focused on her study of the ways that comic art embodies fine art disciplines — a study which granted her the Undergraduate Research Experience Award Program (UREAP) scholarship in 2022.
“Comic style is so broad and versatile,” Roberts said. “It can range from the believable to the completely exaggerated.”
Roberts’ display, consisting of original works of mixed media, embodies this versatility. Her illustrations portray imposing figures, bold shadows and a keen sense of motion, combining all these with elements of humour and satire.
The fourth artist of the exhibit, Javiera Paz Diaz Acevedo, is a second-year fine arts student and concept artist. Their digital drawings and oil paintings present the futuristic tale of a cyber dystopia, where their protagonist must struggle with a dependency on virtual reality.
Faizal Bukhari/The Omega
“It’s kind of a depressing story,” Acevedo said. “But it’s ultimately about how, even if the reality you are living in is hard, you’re still alive and you only have this one life to live.”
Acevado’s love for sweeping narratives is evident in the care with which they handle every aspect of their collection. Their pieces are gothic and austere, often holding both aesthetic and social relevance.
“This one is called the perfect gender,” they said, pointing out an oil painting of a ghostly white figure sitting regally before a dark backdrop. “Because it is a female body, but at the same time a male body. Society says you have to be perfect and beautiful, but at the same time, do everything a man does. You cannot be both at the same time, but you must be. So that’s why it’s the perfect gender — because it doesn’t really exist.”
If you missed the exhibit, you can still catch the final exhibition on April 12, where graduating students of the BFA program will be presenting their pieces in a feature showcase.