Shaun Tan is interviewed by Nicolas
Verstappen on the "du9" weblog.
I almost never start with a theme in mind, so while the story has something to do with feelings of belonging (or not belonging), that emerged as an almost unconscious preoccupation, while I was busy focusing on more specific things like characters or landscapes. In the case of The Arrival, many ideas for the book were inspired by old photographs of people and places than have long since passed away, and these have often been triggers for other paintings of mine. There is a sense of mystery already in historical records that has something to do with their distance and silence, so I need to work my imagination to build a lost world around these little fragments of memory. It's almost as though the absence of information demands the creation of fiction to fill the void.Thanks to Jessa Crispin for the link.]
