Three Taiwanese comic artists have been selected for the 2022-2023 artists-in-residence of La Cité internationale de la Bande Dessinée et de l'image (National Center of Cartooning and Imagery), a cultural center based in Angouleme, and Maison de la bd (House of the Comic Strip), a comic museum in Blois City, France.
The residency program is part of a cooperative pact between the Ministry of Culture and La Cité internationale de la Bande Dessinée et de l'image and Masion de la bd. Taiwanese comic artists Rao Yu-an (饒予安) and Ke Kai-sheng (柯凱升) will reside in Angouleme, while Chen Yong-jie (陳雍杰) will reside in Blois City for three months at the end of the year.
Rao works on graphic design, painting, graphic novel, and animation, among others. He specializes in interpreting "memory" and "loss" from his personal experience. In 2021, his work "Extravagantly Ordinary Night (奢侈凡夜)" was nominated for Best Animation at the Taipei Film Festival; in 2019, "The First Vote of Love (愛的一票)" won the third place in the digital competition of Angouleme International Comics Festival. Rao’s selected residency project "Minority (少數派)" aims to interpret the self, generation, and Taiwan through subtle, humorous, sad and depressing, and even slightly ironic images.
Ke, an award-winning artist, only began creating comics in recent years. His residency project will be a collection of short comics, presenting the experience of living in a foreign country as well as the local culture through visits to museums and bookstores, and observing the streets.
Chen specializes in drawing American-style superhero comics, and his works have been published in the United States, Germany, and Saudi Arabia. For his residency project, he will interview two Marvel comics artists, learn the drawing techniques of French-style comics and visit church facilities in France to gain inspiration from their religious history. He plans to publish the project in Taiwan, the United States and Europe.
Maison de la BD is one of France's premier institutions for cultivating the next generation of comic artists. Since 2015, Taiwan and France jointly select two Taiwanese comic artists to reside in Angouleme each year and increasing the number to three artists in 2018. So far, 16 artists have been selected for the residency program.