The album Yiyun starts with a Prologue – a comic of 8 pages, written and drawn by Maou. In the Prologue, Maou tells about her adoption from China (about which she made the beautiful album ‘Fleur de Prunier’), the Chinese ‘one child’ – policy, the racism she encountered and her meeting with Cosey.
A good opportunity to get to know Maou a little bit better. We had a conversation by e-mail.
First, a short introduction of Maou. Maou tells stories as an illustrator, graphic designer, videomaker and comics artist. Adopted from China, raised in Paris, she moved to Lausanne in 2009 to attend the École Cantonale d’Arts de Lausanne. In 2013, she won the prize Dessinateurs de Demain (Artists of Tomorrow) at BD FIL in Lausanne. After meeting a publisher at the festival, she decided to embark on her first comic book project.
Maou at BF Fil 2023 in Lausanne. Photo by Alex Troesch
In her albums and her online comics, she mostly tells personal, autobiographical stories – only the album La faute du Loup is an adaptation of a novel by Yves Mugny. Maou: ‘My comic book practice is closely linked to my understanding of the events that occur in my life. Drawing things allows me to understand them and often to let go of baggage that I no longer want to carry.’
In Fleur de Prunier, Maou tells the story of her adoption from China as told by her mother. ‘I chose to have my mother telling the story because I really wanted to tell it as I know it, that is, from my mother’s perspective. I also thought that the fact that she addresses the reader as ‘you’, as if it were me, was something I had never seen anywhere else and would really draw the reader into the story emotionally. Indirectly, I think it also reveals something about my own experience. For a long time, the story of my adoption was my mother’s story. Until I returned to the orphanage in 2016, I had no room to make it my own. I was protecting her by putting my own feelings aside. With this graphic novel, I reclaimed my story.’
Fleur de Prunier – cover
Maou currently works on the album Miroir, miroir… (to be published in 2027), a sequel to Fleur de Prunier. We can taste a little of what she will tell there in the Yiyun Prologue.
Humans as animals
In her comics and also in the Prologue to Yiyun, Maou depicts humans as animals. Maou: ‘When I started drawing comics, I spontaneously wanted to represent humans as animals. I wanted to tell stories, but I don’t like drawing humans… So I decided to draw humans as animals!’
Pages from ‘Fleur de Prunier’
‘The reason I draw humans as animals? Maybe I have been traumatized by life model drawing classes at school… But more seriously, I find that drawing animals allows the reader to feel closer to the characters. You focus on the story and the feelings and not on the character’s look: is it a girl? A boy? Is he or she Chinese? Black? White… The reader does not project any prejudices, even unconscious ones, onto the characters. It erases gender and racial inequalities…’
Having read Fleur de Prunier, I can only say that it works remarkably well. Because of the animal characters, the story becomes more universal in a way.
Meeting Cosey
‘The first time we met was at the Delémont Comic Book Festival, where I was invited in June 2016 after the release of my very first comic book, HEJ!. After that, we often ran into each other at book fairs and festivals.’
‘Cosey asked me to write the Prologue to his book in February 2024. He told me that he really liked my album (Fleur de Prunier) and my exhibition at Plateforme 10 when it came out in 2023, and that he was touched by my story. I was very surprised and flattered by this request – I had no idea he even knew about my work or my existence. He immediately suggested that I write it in comic book form, in the style of Fleur de Prunier.’
Maou meeting Cosey – an image from the Prologue to Yiyun
After the first surprise, Maou had her doubts about the project.’I studied and read more of Cosey’s work and I started to feel a little bit afraid that working on this project would be in conflict with the feminist and racial equality values that I convey in my work. Fortunately, after talking with Cosey, I realized that he was very open to discussion and not sensitive about his work at all. Thanks to these exchanges, we were able to come up with a project idea that suited us both.’
Maou talked with Cosey about the women in his albums. ‘I sometimes struggle with the role women play in his comics. As a woman, I find it difficult to identify with them. Talking with Cosey, I realized that this was not due to a misogynistic perspective, but rather to a lack of awareness on his part, which is why I agreed to work on the project anyway.’
‘Growing up, I always had a preference for humorous comic books so I wasn’t very familiar with Cosey’s work before. I had just seen a few of his albums at festivals and had certainly leafed through more than one in my family’s libraries, which are full of comic books. But I must admit that his stories were not among my favorites.’
Some last words about the albums of Cosey: ‘I think his stories allow readers to travel and open themselves up to the world by discovering horizons that many people of his readers’ generation would not have been able to access otherwise. And that’s a good thing.’
The Prologue by Maou is a valuable addition to the Yiyun album, it seems to me. And who knows we will see some changes in the future albums by Cosey after his discussions with Maou.
Follow Maou here:
Thanks to Maou!
