Visual narratives about death, grief and the sense of loss in adolescence

This paper is part of a master's degree project, still in progress, in the field of Image Design, which title is: Visual narratives about death, grief and the sense of loss in adolescence and it will be presented to the Fine Arts Faculty of the University of Porto. The project as the main goal to reflect about the key-role of illustration and writing when creating visual narratives that aim to reflect a theme that is so intimate, human and extremely personal, which is the death of a father. We talk about the illustrator as a character, through the ability that the illustrator has when portraying himself through autobiographical narratives. We also approach the idea of the illustrator as an interpreter, by the way he, himself, is his own interpreter able to, at the same time interpret what he feels and the outcome of his own work, seeking for solutions that provide a self-therapy. We approach briefly methodological questions about the fact of this project being an autoethnographic act, where the subject that investigates is, at the same time, the object of research. Being aware of the analytical difficulties underlying the construction of an umbilical project like this, there is a greater need to blur the relationship between private and public. The vulnerability and honesty of the author become the key elements of the project. This project proposes an approach to graphic visual narratives, with a strong concern in the intuitive, meditative and therapeutic process of the drawing and, in the way images are mentally recollected by the author through rituals of memory. The images, somewhat abstract-looking, most of them made through blind-contour drawing exercises, allow the reader a wider perspective to imagine and to recreate the image. The captions and some written moments show the reader the path to walk but are entirely up to the reader to let himself absorb and re- interpret each image and each context, allowing each image to speak for itself.