‧ Chinese Name: 雷
‧ Year of Birth: 1993
‧ Place of Birth: Taipei, Taiwan
‧ Did You Know?
In Ray's view, comics are similar to films, they are the mediums for telling a story visually. Ray once said that although she has been in the habit of drawing since she was a child, she never thought she would really become a comic artist, and so spending her time in Blois, France, as a comics artist-in-residence will be a refreshing and novel experience for her. The narrative and storyboard skills that she developed in college as a film student were nourishments for her work in comics. Her path to comics art was a winding one, starting with art classes through elementary and high school, spending her childhood drawing away while watching television. After senior high, she would continue to draw simple comics, but she never imagined she would actually make it a profession.
Comic artist Ray He (雷) was born in 1993 in Taipei. After graduating with a degree in Motion Pictures from the National Taiwan University of Arts, she traveled to Edinburgh to pursue graduate studies in illustration. Because of an intuitive connection to distant places and nature, her works often explore the spiritual connection between human beings and their environment, recording an awareness of the surrounding environment and the idea of inner-landscape within her consciousness. Ray primarily works in illustration and is currently a freelance writer of graphic novels.
Over the past years, Ray has been awarded the Reader’s Choice Award in the first original comic and script creation competition organized by the Cultural Content Institute’s Creative Comic Collection and Taiwan Comic Base. Her first medium-length graphic novel "Intertidal" was nominated for the Golden Comic Awards in 2020. She commented that her abstract artworks and non-mainstream themes are difficult to appreciate or understand, thus she is happy that her works are recognized by the judges, and it is an incredible experience to be nominated for the award.
"Intertidal" portrays a journey in pursuit of an inner homeland. The main character, Sun Xun, is a Chinese-American who feels that he does not fit into American society and that he belongs to another place. Ray incorporated some thoughts about panpsychism and animism in the comic, hoping that readers would come to understand how they can connect with other things in a relatively invisible way and explore what role people should play in the ecosystem.
In addition to graphic design, Ray has also published works in magazines and on online comic platforms, including "The Bosom Stone" and "Island and Water." In 2021, she was chosen as a resident artist at bd BOUM - Maison de la BD (House of the Comic Strip) 2021-2022, where she will reside in Blois city in the Centre-Val de Loire region of central France for three months. During that time, in addition to exhibitions, there will be comic book collections, experiential classes, and comic book historical documents available, along with workshops, author signing sessions, and comic book festivals. During her residency, Ray will have the opportunity to participate in the BD Boum, an annual comic festival held in Blois by Maison de la BD, as well as the Angoulême International Comics Festival.
The theme of the residency program is “We Are Not The Wise Elders Among Them,” and her work will comprise a collection of five short comics. Ray has said that if the history of the Earth were imagined as 24 hours, humans would only have appeared at the last minute, and so sitting on the beach, one could assume that the trees next to them and the coral reefs at the bottom of the sea, all much older than humans, may know many more things than we do. Although the world nowadays seems to be dominated by humanity, she hopes to use different comic book scenarios as a metaphor for the importance of coexistence with the environment.
In Ray's view, comics are similar to films, they are the best mediums for telling a story visually. Ray once said that although she has been in the habit of drawing since she was a child, her path to comics art was a winding one, starting with art classes through elementary and high school, spending her childhood drawing away while watching television. After senior high, she would continue to draw simple comics, and the narrative and storyboard skills that she developed in college as a film student were nourishments for her work in comics.
She never thought she would really become a comic artist, and so spending her time in Blois, France, as a comic artist-in-residence will be a refreshing and novel experience for her.