For the first time, Wobby shares its magazine with a guest curator: the Ukrainian illustration collective Pictoric. While the world witnesses significant geopolitical events impacting millions of people, Wobby #37 delves into the meanings of 'home'. Pictoric and Wobby.club selected 12 international visual creators and a writer to produce new work from diverse perspectives. With Wobby's characteristic poetic lightness and powerful color palette, they explore the theme of displacement. What makes a home? Can we return to what it once was? A home as a flying carpet, a connection through online media, a flight as a temporary vacation, becoming a stranger in your community; displacement demands immense survival and imaginative power. In addition to ardent visual work, Wobby #37 features a new text by the acclaimed Ukrainian writer Kateryna Babkina.
The cover of Wobby #37, made by Anna Sarvira (UA/DE)
Pictoric's own Anna Sarvira created the cover of Wobby #37. Her flight two years ago still feels very recent to her. In Germany, where she now lives, she noticed she started to fit in once her local coffee place knew she would always order a cappuccino. She sometimes feels guilty for leaving her country while others couldn't. To alleviate that feeling somewhat, she has made it her goal to serve as a spokesperson for the artists and illustrators who couldn't flee Ukraine. Despite the heaviness of the subject, she deliberately created a cover with a lot of color.
Illustration by Marina Sulima (MD/RO/NL)
For participants Marina Sulima and Khattar Shaheen, the Netherlands has become their home in recent years. Marina’s parents immigrated from Moldova to seek a better life, while she temporarily stayed with her grandparents in Romania. The only sign of life that she received from her parents were food parcels they sent from Italy. When Marina eventually moved to the Netherlands, she especially struggled with the change in culture, although she is gradually becoming more accustomed to it; according to her, home is a place where you can find peace. Marina found inspiration for her contribution to Wobby #37 in a news article about an individual who fled Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan and now seeks refuge in Google Maps, where they can still experience their old surroundings. Although Marina’s house remains intact and unoccupied by others, she still often travels back to the streets, rivers, trees, and animals of her hometown. Her illustration serves as a mental map of her memory: revelers eating, dancing, and drinking.
Illustrations by Khattar Shaheen (SY/NL)
Syria-born Khattar Shaheen fled to the Netherlands in 2015. According to him, a home is a place in which you can grow and is more of a feeling than a physical location. It is also the place where he spent his youth. He knows he can’t return to this place anymore. Even if he did, the people would’ve changed too much for him to still feel at home. For Khattar, his flight meant the loss of his ambitions and dreams. He partially rediscovered this during his study at the art academy in the Netherlands. He finds solace in drawing, painting, and making animations, not with a deliberate plan, but in the process of creation. In drawings full of symbolism – an empty costume, a cramped room – he tries to depict his feelings of pressure and oppression, that he experiences in his day-to-day life.
(left) Jiacun Li (CN/UK) and (right) Omar Cheikh (TN/IT)
Background
The collective of illustrators Pictoric has been realising exhibitions, publications, projects, workshops, and talks since 2014. Wobby.club has been the leading platform for autonomous illustration since 2015, based in the Netherlands. In 2022, Wobby.club already provided a platform for Ukrainian creators through 'Insta Only', a series of online visual stories, in which multiple creators from Pictoric were already involved. Wobby #37 is an in-depth continuation of this initial introduction.
Participants Wobby #37 – Far From Home
Cristóbal Schmal (CL/DE), Jiacun Li (CN/UK), Kateryna Babkina (UA/UK), Khattar Shaheen (SY/NL), Lucie Lučanská (CZ), Marina Sulima (MD/RO/NL), Oleg Schcherba (UA), Omar Cheikh (TN/IT), Studio Seri/graph (UA), Zhenya Oliinyk (UA), Zsófia Rumi (HU)
Cover by Anna Sarvira (UA/DE)
Centerfold & limited edition print by Oleg Gryshchenko (UA)
Contact
Would you like more information about this edition of Wobby? Please contact us at info@wobby.club.