Meeting with the artist: Kaija Papu
When artist Kaija Papu from Tampere meets a new lover, she draws a comic about it. For the next year, readers of Kiasma Magazine will get to follow the artist’s unfolding romance. The comics can also be cut out and folded into a small book.
Who are you?
I am Kaija Papu, a visual artist from Tampere. Sometimes I play records, and then my name is DJ Risto Paristo.
How would you describeyour comics?
I don’t use any frames in my comics and very few speech balloons. Sometimes my comics almost feel more like picture books than traditional comics. For me, personally, the important thing is the insight or a funny gag. I feel like a winner when a fnished piece seems funny to me as well, or when I suddenly get a brilliant idea. Generally speaking, ideas and contexts are more important for me than the visual appearance. A shitty picture can be saved by a good idea, but even a great picture cannot redeem shitty content. Oh yes, my comics are often about gender norms and sexuality, and they contain black and brutal humour and self irony.
What inspires you?
The strip in this issue of Kiasma Magazine came purely from the force of infatuation. I recently met a great guy who had for a long time been reading the comics I have made with Aino Louhi. When we got round to kissing, I said as a joke that he should be careful, he would soon appear in a strip. He told me he didn’t mind being a character in a comic, but so did all the others before half the town of Tampere began sneering at them.
In other ways, too, this strip was a rediscovery of the fun of drawing for me. Drawing has for a long time been mostly about work and production, not something I enjoyed. But when I was drawing this, I had fun when I was holding the pen, not just when I was developing the idea. I am really excited about the concept of folding comics. This is a neat way of making a small colourful magazine that does not cost a fortune. On a more general level, I’m inspired by the feelings, humour and directness of the comicstrip medium.
How do you work?
I usually work too much, and it’s difcult to disengage myself from it. It would be nice to be able to switch of my working brain, just as I switch of the lights when I leave the studio. It’s the thinking that takes time with comics, the actual drawing goes quite quickly in my case. Cutting the diamond is the hardest bit, but the paper is usually still blank when that’s over with.
-Piia Laita
