This Quiet Belonging
A short form wordless comic, This Quiet Belonging celebrates queer love and domesticity through the lens of a young couple's daily life.
The booklet was produced using physical markmaking and drawing combined with digital application of colour to create the rich domestic setting the characters inhabit.
Batsford Prize 2023 shortlisted
Narrative Illustration, Graphic Novel
View the whole booklet in the slideshow below!
Historically, the concept of domesticity has meant something significantly different to LGBTQ+ people than to cis / straight people; by openly living a queer life, people would risk being evicted, publicly shunned, and imprisoned. This denial of access to domestic spaces is something that many LGBTQ+ people still struggle with today, and this history of discrimination makes us value having secure spaces even more.
My submission aims to focus on the experience of queer joy, of finding peace in the everyday, and to represent the realities of what queer relationships can look like in their whole. The booklet follows the day of a couple from the point of waking up to going to sleep, and aims to highlight the quiet beauty of our daily routines. Approaching the subject from a semi-autobiographical perspective, I used my own experiences to inform the images. I worked with mixed-media processes, primarily with traditional drawing and mark-making, as well as digital colouring. My hope for this project is that it reflects the experiences of other queer people, and that the quiet peacefulness of the characters’ relationship resonates with them.