Dr. Biz Nijdam
Assistant Professor of German Studies
University of British Columbia
The smartphone aesthetics of mobility in contemporary comics on global migration
In the last decade, comics and graphic novels on migration have become an essential forum for representing refugee experience. This emergent genre of graphic narration not only offers the representation of migrant hardships from the subjective perspective of refugees, artists, and volunteers working in the community, comics on the refugee crisis also develop empathy and awareness for the plight of migrants internationally by giving a voice to countless nameless – and often faceless – migrants, whose images circulate widely in the media. Moreover, comic artists working on refugee and migrant subjects are inventing new visual languages to express these individuals’ perilous journeys from war-torn regions of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia to European soil, incorporating the very media technology essential for migration – and its representation – into the comics form. Looking at the smartphone and social media aesthetics of two comics on global migration, Kate Evans’ Threads: From the Refugee Crisis (2017) and Reinhard Kleist’s An Olympic Dream: The Story of Samia Yusuf Omar (2016), this presentation assesses the significance of incorporating the technologies of migration into its representation.
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