“What we want to do is to open the door for people to understand illustration in a different way,” says Dr Sydney Shep, Reader in Book History and printer at Wai-te-Ata Press, who will co-chair the panel. “In other words, it's more than image-making, it's more than something that's the handmaiden or servant to other people's words. It's actually a really dynamic medium."
This year’s lecture, titled ‘Illustration and/as translation’, features three European illustrators, Antje Damm (Germany), Aurore Petit (France), and Piotr Socha (Poland), and three Indigenous illustrators Toaga Alefosio (Sāmoa), Tru Paraha (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Te Tarawa, Te Kahu o Torongare), and Nālani Wilson-Hokowhitu (Kanaka ʻŌiwi, Hawai’i). The Indigenous contributors are all practicing artists as well as academics.
The panel will be chaired by Dr Shep, and Dr Marco Sonzogni, professor of Translation Studies, and director of the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation (NZCLT).
Dr Wilson-Hokowhitu wrote and illustrated a picture book based on her doctoral thesis, and lectures in Pacific Studies. Toaga Alefosio is a lecturer in Samoan Studies and is researching tattoo as a form of translation. Dr Paraha is a performance writer and visual poet. She lectures in the English Literatures and Creative Communication programme.
“All three of our Indigenous guest panelists are the embodiment of this conversation, whether on their skin, in their dance, in their writing. So we’re lucky and excited to have them,” says Dr Sonzogni.
Bringing together book history and book publishing with translation studies is a developing area in interdisciplinary and multimodal scholarship, says Dr Sonzogni. “Scholars and artists are looking at the process of translation as alternative lenses, both critical and creative, to understand books, book history, book making and book publishing.”
“We’ve been working with a lot of very different illustrators for Wai-te-ata Press projects and it seemed to us that there was something around the notion of illustration and translation,” says Dr Shep. “One of the questions we asked our speakers to consider is, ‘do you conceive of illustration as being a form of translation? And if so, how does that emerge in your understanding and your practice?’”
The panel aims to provoke people to think beyond illustration as merely decorative image-making, and to think more deeply about the process of moving between different media forms and what each offers to the other. “It’s very steeped in culture,” says Dr Sonzogni.
“In the context of children's literature, we tend to think that text illustrations are apolitical,” says Dr Shep, “but they're steeped in individual cultural norms and oftentimes cross-cultural communication between countries. How can you cross cultures and and not appropriate and not stereotype? What's a genuine dialogue between cultures?
“Illustration as a visual medium is one way of undertaking that kind of project. It’s steeped in in cultural context, steeped in perceived cultural norms, but it's a highly charged kind of political activity."
The panel is sponsored by Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, and hosted by the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation. Jean Anderson was the founding director of NZCLT, and the annual lecture has been named to acknowledge her contribution to translation.
The event runs from 6 pm in the Old Government Buildings, Lecture Room 1 on Wednesday 18 September. You can register and find more info here.
This event is part of the Picture Me festival, a series of events celebrating illustration for children, organised by the Goethe Institute, Gecko Press, the Embassy of France, Alliance Française, and the Polish Embassy. The series features the three European illustrators who have been sponsored by their respective countries and embassies to do a series of panel discussions, workshops, lectures, and hands-on activities in Wellington and Christchurch in September.