Sarra haji: Hand made books & internal exploration

Hiiii I'm Sarra, I'm currently in my third year at UON studying illustration, and I'm a fine-art illustrator. I love to make artist books and zines the most, I also love films, poetry, philosophy, and printmaking, and I have a slightly unhealthy obsession with existential questioning. My work tends to explore the weirdness of feeling and inner world experiences, so themes like grief, loneliness, identity crisis - all the fun stuff! (I try balance out the heaviness with silly little creatures sometimes). I’ve always experienced feelings as something tactile but I never really knew what that meant until I started to try and give form to these invisible and confusing states in my project ‘Ways of Being’, where I focused on the feel of the materials and imagery over the content itself. That’s when my questioning found an outlet and since then I’ve been exploring all this through lots of things like texture, colour, collage, characters, book art - whatever it may be. The way I like to work is mainly intuitive and process-led, so a lot of my ideas come from the materials/mediums I use and the making itself; I’m always experimenting which means I’m constantly making ‘mistakes’, and these have built the majority of what my illustration style has evolved into. I’m so grateful for the illustration course I’m on, the tutors and technicians - without them I don’t think I would be working in this way at all.

I never really knew what that meant until I started to try and give form to these invisible and confusing states

Requiem was originally a 1/1 hardback artist book for my first self-initiated uni project in my 2nd year. I knew I wanted to explore the complexities of dissociation and inner collapse, as I regularly struggle with derealisation and so it was a way for me to process my experiences, but also to create something that makes people feel less alone in those emotions. I really wanted to create an immersive world by evoking emotion and building an atmosphere using not just the imagery, but the book as an object itself. The ideas are actually heavily inspired by Carl Jung's Red Book and his work surrounding shadows and dreams, specifically his quote "I lived into the depths, and the depths began to speak”. The story of Requiem is a little fragmented on purpose, taking you through the messy stages of numbness and dissociation [ACT I], the panic of coming face to face with your shadows [ACT II], and the weirdly beautiful, melancholic sadness that comes with learning to integrate parts of yourself you used to shun [ACT III]. Requiem doesn’t really aim to resolve anything, it’s more of a visual interpretation of the long, and often repetitive, process of growth despite inner struggle. Also, I was listening to Lausee the Cats album “The Mocking Stars” on repeat during that time, and it has this incredible overly dramatic, theatre-like atmosphere to it which I adored - it heavily influenced the poem I wrote for Requiem, from the dramatic tone of the writing to the eccentric narrator we never meet. I recommend everyone to listen to Lausse because his work is unlike anything I’ve heard before!

it’s more of a visual interpretation of the long, and often repetitive, process of growth despite inner struggle.

I had a lot of aims for Requiem, one of them being to learn more about bookbinding to see if I really do enjoy making my own books. For the illustrations, I made the majority of them using a pretty unusual print process where I heavily dilute intaglio inks with white spirit, I paint with them onto a metal plate, then run it through a press, or step on over some blankets at home, to create these deeply atmospheric washes in my monotypes. I also like to use a process called chine colle, and mediums like pencil and oil pastel on the plate to build the prints in varying layers. I then scan my work into Photoshop and inDesign, constantly switching between the two, editing and collaging the prints as I sort them into a sequence I’m happy with. There’s a lot of back and forth throughout the whole process. The types of paper I used are as much part of the story as is the imagery; Shoji paper and tracing papers have a really wonderful translucency that allowed me to layer pages to build on the feeling of dissociation. The mini versions are made in almost exactly the same way - arranged in indesign, printed using an inkjet printer, hand-cut, aligned and stacked, ready for me to drill with an awl and hand-bind using a classic Japanese stab stitch. I think it’s important to me because I adore the process of making; I Iove how personal it is and how present you have to be, it feels like I’m really a part of my work. I also kinda hate the fast paced society we live in, everything just feels so soulless now, so I’ve grown a huge appreciation for and attraction towards working more traditionally. I’m so fascinated when I watch videos of traditional Japanese woodblock carvers where you see how much love they hold for their craft just by the care and sensitivity in their approach to the materials - I think it’s so beautiful! There’s a part of me that longs for simplicity, and a way of making that’s slow and filled with deep care for the things that can be easily overlooked nowadays like the type of paper we print on, or the tools we use.

Shoji paper and tracing papers have a really wonderful translucency that allowed me to layer pages to build on the feeling of dissociation.

I was born in Czech Republic, and moved to England back in 2006, I have a Czech/Tunisian background and I’m muslim, so sense of place is odd for me, I’ve always felt most at home inside my room, never really feeling part of any community too strongly. But recently Northampton has become important to my practice in the sense that a lot of my inspiration comes from the town in small ways; whether its the place itself, interactions with friends, or with a conspicuous 70 year old man at the bus stop that I never see again - it definitely feeds into my work in more ways than I probably notice. I actually have a collection of photos of over 60 different ‘lonely' chairs I find, usually on my bus journeys or walks, around Northampton that end up in odd places. It’s become so much of a thing that my friends send me photos of chairs they find too. I have to thank someone who means a lot to me for opening my eyes to the beauty and unique charm of the town, because I definitely used to be a big hater. Now I see it for the incredibly diverse range of cultures and people it holds, the beautiful countrysides and villages, gems like Peters bookshop (Heyford Books), Butt Savouries, and Photomafia too! We have a lot of hidden gems around here that really make the town special. Northampton to me is like an absolutely insane fever dream and that’s why I love it!

whether its the place itself, interactions with friends, or with a conspicuous 70 year old man at the bus stop that I never see again

I love how supportive the artists are of each other here! I’ve done some workshops as part of a collective called ‘Tv on a Trolley’ with my friends, and with my class at places like the Yard. I also worked my first art fair over the summer in Northampton Museum which was fun! It was interesting actually, there was a number of people, of varying ages, who talked to me about zines and expressed how they’d love to make them, but how the town lacks art events like this for people to attend. It made me think that maybe there is a big demand for workshops and third places for people to meet, connect and get to switch off and just create. We definitely need more support and opportunities to share our work as artists in this town, there’s so many incredible creatives and I think if we had more of an involvement within the town we would really be able to do something amazing.

…who talked to me about zines and expressed how they’d love to make them, but how the town lacks art events like this for people to attend.

Most recently I’ve been fascinated with using more unorthodox materials. So I’ve been experimenting with dipping various fabrics and papers into candle wax to see how they behave together. Some of the pieces reminded me of skin, so I wanted to create a small book containing illustrations of a fragmented human heart, that I bound in a way that mimics the number of main blood vessels and coronary arteries attached to the heart. It’s not finished yet, but so far it’s been really fun to work on! I’m also currently planning to further investigate how fabric fits into my practice through a project where I will be picking a poem and interpreting it through my printmaking process on various translucent textiles, with the intention of making a small lampshade as the final piece. For my FMP, I am currently hoping to make a box that holds a collection of handmade experimental artist books, zines, poetry, a short essay, prints, embroidered fabric, a chair, a pony, a portal to another world - who knows! I will be exploring ideas of the weird and the eerie, feeling vs logic, the unknown, phenomenology with a hint of Islamic mysticism, maybe aliens, maybe not… It’s all just big ideas right now, so we’ll see how much I will be able to actually execute them; it might send me into a real existential crisis by May next year.

Words by: Sarra Haji