Siyu Qu 屈思雨

Siyu Qu was born in China. She is a graphic designer and illustrator currently based in London. Before she pursued her passion for visual art, Siyu had trained as a textile designer for seven years and got an MFA in textile design from Zhengjiang Sci-tech University in 2018.

She is passionate about finding the spark in stories from the quotidian and trivial in life. Her work is diverse in form, not affiliated with a single discipline, but only serving the content. Sketching, collage and moving image are the forms of expression she currently practices. Recently she has started to enjoy and experiment with manga style narrative. Through her art practice she hopes to uncover her innermost self and to build bridges with her audience.

This project is my exploration and reflection of the complex parent-child relationship through telling the life story between me and my mother Through manga.

My mother used to work as a broadcaster and journalist in my hometown's TV station. Because of her busy work, I was raised by my grandparent until I went to high school. In my childhood memory, 'mother' is just a term. 'mother' is the image of a woman dressed formally reporting news on television. 'Mother' is the door shut when she left home to go to work. 'Mother' is a shadow that cannot be touched. Because of her long absence as I was growing up, this emotional void caused some mutual uncommunicable incomprehension and unhappiness on both sides. Now I'm grown up, we sometimes encounter disagreements in our lives, and when I try to communicate with my mother as an independent person, I am often met with her using the attribute of the child to emphasise our subordinate relationship. I understand family affection to be multi-layered, including both love and warmth, as well as frustration and exhaustion. With these ideas in mind, I wanted to create a short story to explore the complexities of intimacy.

Happy birthday to me