Contextual Research - Dadu Shin

 I found a series of editorial illustrations that Dadu Shin had created surrounding the subject of disability when I was making my own personal illustrations on depression last summer and needed some illustrators to help contextualise the work I was making, highly relevant to my practice. These editorial pieces really stuck with me, for the breadth of disabilities and stories being portrayed and the similar way they were all approached. I want to use these as a good foundation of contextual research for social exclusion and loneliness in my project to help with compositional and colour palette ideas when it comes to creating work for the One and Only picture book.

"If You're in a Wheelchair, Segregation Lives"

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/opinion/if-youre-in-a-wheelchair-segregation-lives.html

Dadu's illustration visualising Luticha Doucette's article for the New York Times depicting a black woman with incomplete quadriplegia and chronic pain and how her ability to move freely is severely impacted and frequently restricted. The social attitudes of ingrained ableism and ignorance and inaccessibility hinder her daily - something I deal with too. The colourless and featureless able-boded crowd is cleverly placed along her like a prison, a chain link fence of limbs, and she is trapped. The colours are muted and the most saturated are the woman herself, she is the focal point and this is her story. The sky graduates down bringing the eye down centrally to her where she is encased and unimpressed. The colours suggest the indifference of society when faced with a disabled person, not aware they are making a barrier of themselves. I face this issue everyday when walking about with Tami, my guide dog. Sighted people walking into us and not watching where they are going, too busy with their phone, standing on Tami's paws, walking into me and bashing me with shopping bags. It's exhausting and unwelcoming and makes me hate going out into the world.

"Passing My Disability onto My Children"

https://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/illustration/dadu-shins-visual-narratives-of-disability-are-insightful-elegant/#5

Dadu Shin created this powerful illustration in response to Shelia Black's essay openly exploring the pains of a mother passing hypophophatemia, a type of dwarfism, onto her children. Dadu's illustration depicts a family of three, all holding hands, in a busy crowd who are not. The visual language of the dots suggests their genes being the same and passed down while also being central and the focal point of the composition. The soft, blurry figures in the background created in coloured pencil do not have the same visual language as the family and are not the same height. The crowd have the same height and visual language however, with darker figures on the edges drawing the eye inwards back on the family. The warm colour palette is welcoming and friendly, the shapes are soft and there is no bold or harshness beyond the genes. It is almost dream-like.

"Becoming Disabled"
https://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/illustration/dadu-shins-visual-narratives-of-disability-are-insightful-elegant/#1

Dadu's illustration for The New York Times was based on a series of features written by disabled people during the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Paralympics reviling raw truths about living with a disability and the societal treatment. The shadows and multi-layered textures marry isolation and acceptance. These are "honest, raw, authentic and moving pieces of opinion." Disability is everywhere. Warm colours paired with colder, shadows mixed with light. The image suggests a metamorphosis, a growth, a realisation and acceptance. We are all people inside just like the central, able-boded person.