We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Junyu Lin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Junyu below.

Alright, Junyu thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The most meaningful one would be my MFA thesis project. It’s a picture book about domestic violence, which tells a story about a woman who’s living in an abusive relationship with her husband. The book depicts a day in this woman’s life. She pretended that she was still okay and tried to maintain a normal life. However, she was not. She was in trauma, she saw illusions of her husband and his violent behavior wherever she went, and she was always tired and scared. When she got back home, her drunk husband assaulted her again. This time, she couldn’t bear it anymore and killed her husband.
I want to show that suffering in domestic violence is not only physical but also mental.
The title of my book, THAT’S HIM, is an inner monologue from this woman, which is used on almost every page of the book. By repeating this single sentence again and again, I want to show the mood changing of the character: from anxious and scared, to resigned and tired, finally it ends up in rage and blood. The whole book tells the story from the woman’s point of view, and only on the last page, after she killed her husband, the ‘camera’ turned to the woman herself. This time, she was not thinking “That’s him.” but “And this is me.” And readers will realize that to fight for her life, the woman has turned into a monster as well.

I also used a lot of supernatural elements and metaphors in my drawing to visualize the protagonist’s traumatic experience. The husband appears mostly as a shape of a wolf-like monster in the story. When the woman decided to kill her husband, her hair curls turned into snakes – as a metaphor of Medusa, who is now more often seen as a symbol of feminism and women’s independence.

I’ve always been trying to create stories about domestic violence. I grew up witnessing many domestic violence cases in daily life. Especially the years in my home country, there was news, almost every day, about women being harassed, abused, kidnapped, and even murdered. It’s a huge issue in that society that can’t be ignored. And as an artist, I feel obliged to put my effort into this. I wish I could get more and more people to pay attention to this topic.

My work emphasizes how an abusive relationship would affect a person’s mental state. I want people to be aware that it is common and normal for a victim to hide their wounds, to escape from reality. People should support and encourage those who suffer to stand up and help them. A victimized woman might make mistakes and become a criminal as well, that doesn’t change the fact that she needs help and support.

Junyu, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I grew up in northeast China and moved to Shanghai when I was 15. Drawing has always been my hobby ever since childhood. I didn’t take any art classes in my early years, but comics, manga, anime, and cartoons are always my friends and that’s how I learned drawing. Whenever I was lonely, drawing made me feel peaceful and fulfilled. For a long time, I thought drawing would just be a hobby for the rest of my life, until I met with an art college professor and he showed me the life of an artist. I started to consider pursuing art as my future career, and with support from my family, I chose to study fine art in college. A few years later, I went to graduate school and got my MFA in illustration at Fashion Institute of Technology in 2022.

For many artists, the hardest thing at the beginning of their art career is to find their own artistic voice. There’s no shortcut to it, you can only keep trying, creating more and more artwork until you figure it out. In terms of myself, I found that I want to become a storyteller during this journey of self-discovery. I did several comics and narrative projects in my graduate study and finished a picture book for my visual thesis. I often found inspiration in real-life experiences and interpreted them with my own stories, and I believe that a good story should be a combination of reality and imagination.

Throughout these years, I’ve been awarded in many professional illustration contests including American Illustration 39, 3×3 Magazine Annual, 2022 Stevan Dohanos Awards, Creative Quarterly 60, and Creative Quarterly 69. Now I’m still based in New York and as a member of the Society of Illustrators, I’ll continue building my career as an illustrator. I did illustrations for two books, which will both be published in China later this year. I’m also planning on creating my own graphic novel.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of being an illustrator, for me, is showing my own stories to the audience and getting their reactions and feedback. My stories are often based on certain emotions from myself, and I always hope people could find them relatable and resonate with them.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Most artists work as freelancers, which is a long and hard path. I’d say if you want to support an artist you like, provide them with good reviews and share them on social media.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.junyulin.net
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessielin_art/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/junyulin/

Image Credits
personal photo by Jialin Zhang