‘‘
I’m basically drawn to any work that’s quite imaginative, but still very attached to real-world concerns and especially ‘true’.
surrounded by people who know a great deal about displacement, my parents being quite separated from their extended families either by distance or conflict, and my wife is from Finland. Unless you are Indigenous in Australia, you are an immigrant or the descendants of immigrants. We are a nation overflowing with tales of displacement, both willing and forced; convicts, settlers, runaways and refugees. We celebrate and struggle with this; for all its harmony, the stain of racist injustice runs deep.”
Feeling displaced
Shaun spoke about growing up as a half-Asian in a mostly British heritage suburb and the currents of anti-Asian feeling during parts of the 80s. “I grew up knowing it was always under the surface of backyard barbecues, just waiting for permission to emerge. I think that left quite an impression on me, of feeling a bit different to
Autumn-Winter 2020
Shaun Tan.
my peers, if only by the way that I was regarded. I only really noticed my Asian- ness and size (I was unusually short) if I looked in a mirror, or a bully called it out.”
A positive that grew out of this was the ability it gave to empathise with others who were in some ways displaced. He says: “I naturally gravitated to them as friends. Ethnic kids, nerds, disabled kids, gay kids, kids from odd backgrounds. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised everyone feels displaced in one way or another, a bit anxious about their relationship to a place, even to themselves. It was perhaps just more
openly obvious for some, more fully realised.
“In some ways the outsiders had a head start in thinking about individuality, of not being able to coast along so sheepishly with the mainstream. I suspect a lot of them became quite creative or entrepreneurial people, if they survived all the slings and arrows. I certainly know that all my friends who are artists and writers now often talk about feeling at odds with their home, marginalised in one way or another, of being forced to find their own ideology in a sense. Perhaps I’m the same.” The processes of other artists are of huge
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