Anu Ambasna

0:04 Hello this is more of an affirmation for myself right now to just say that it's okay but yeah this is going to be a bit chaotic so bear with me but you're about to enter my world. And it's going to get personal because my work is very personal my work is like a diary and it's a response to the world around me and a core focus of my work is storytelling and world building and I kind of tap into my unconscious mind and my work is inspired by the mundane parts of life but with humor injected into everything I create and so a general life ethos of mine is that knowledge is power and I'm an inherently curious person. And I like to explore this through my work. And I love learning about the past through art through design through music and archives and my work is basically an archive of my life whilst still paying respect to the past and so my work is sometimes silly a little bit rude with a very strong diy ethos I like to create genderless figures in hopes that everyone feels somewhat represented and if there are if there is gender in my work it's usually very small dicks like you can see here and most of my work is hand-drawn but I also believe that like there shouldn't be any limitations on medium but I really like to use pens pencils and paints so now I'm going to trace back to the beginning kind of where it all started and as a kid I was always drawing and here you can see some sketchbooks from maybe when I was about 13 or 14 and I was always creating characters and unconsciously developing the style that I have today. And I was always drawing what was around me in my head and like I guess drawing from the depths of my imagination.

2:21 And I got into art and comics at a young age and I was also really into fashion and my dream was to be a fashion illustrator as you can see here and art for me is a child and still is really a way for me to block out the world around me and the world around me wasn't always positive so art has always acted as a form of therapy for me. And is my safe place really and when I'm making art I feel the most at home. And so here is the first zine I ever made it's very pixelated it's a shitty scan but I made this when I was 15. It's embarrassing but anyway after I finished school I did my foundation year at london quality of communication I hated it. And then. I was I just went to berlin for a year tried to work in fashion also hated that came back to london tried a number of jobs hated them all.

3:20 And then decided to go back into education.

3:22 So I spent a blip of a year at camberwell studying illustration and believe it or not hated that also and within all of these spaces and all of these things I tried I just increasingly grew annoyed at the fact that no one looked like me. And so I decided to create spaces for myself and in 2015 I put on my first exhibition called who is snacks and I'm very inspired and influenced by celebrity culture and so I created this ambiguous celebrity figure called snacks who is heavily influenced by zayn malik fan fiction which is a really weird corner of the internet to go down and snack still makes appearances in my work today. And so around the time I dropped out of uni I started to find and create my own spaces within music.

4:21 And I started on putting club nights in london and berlin and I would create bespoke artwork for each of the club nights which involve djs and artists from all over the world. And so you can see some examples here and also around that time me and my friend started a music magazine called equalizer where I wrote articles created illustrations and we put on events the two posters in the corner here equalizer posters and we also put out a zine and then in 2016 I started working for a record label and a party called rhythm section international where. I was label manager and made posters again and dj'd at the parties and around this time as well I was going to gigs and festivals and doing illustrated reviews on them.

5:16 This is what I did for deck mantle festival in 2015 and here is another one from 2015 and it was a floating points live show. And this was a direct response to it. And so for me like music and art have always gone hand in hand together. And informed one another as part of my creative practice and it's something that comes very naturally to me because I have a really like pure love for both these art forms and my work is also heavily influenced by club culture like this druggy comic that I made in 2015.

5:55 And then in 2017 I took a break from making art because depression. And I was still drawing but not often and not in the same way. And I was kind of I was at like rock bottom to be honest and it was showing in everything that I was creating and I wasn't really proud of my work at this point and then 2020 the pandemic happened and I had a freak out like most people because my main source of income which was djing at the time was no longer an option.

6:27 So I went back to the drawing board literally and figuratively and practiced drawing non-stop and fell back in love with the art form and I felt like I was back at home. And I was using my most powerful tool which is my hands and so I started drawing everything around me.

6:51 And went back to one of my favorite art forms which is comics and I was taking inspiration from friends like this one on the left where are you that was my flatmate eating some really spicy noodles and yeah. So most of my work starts off as something that I've written in my notes app and it could be like a silly conversation or something funny a friend has said or something I've seen or overheard in the outside world or I don't know usually just a dumb idea that I've had when I'm a little bit stoned and then.

7:26 I also started drawing family recipes and exploring my culture and heritage through art. And I was seeking answers and some form of attachment towards my heritage too and at this time I started creating work that felt like an extension of me again and my general happiness started to grow with my skills and then.

7:52 I started posting my work on instagram more I started a weekly newsletter that I tried to keep up for as long as I could and then.

7:58 I started getting commissions like this excellent one from this nice that's weekly comic which was kind of a dream and this one where are you josh there you are this one came from me and my flatmate josh coming up with egg puns for about an hour and just laughing so hard so I turned it into a comic and yeah I'm also heavily inspired by my work as a dj so I often see people in the club or at festivals and either I'll like write down like you know specific characteristics about them or I'll just remember them and end up drawing them.

8:39 And illustrating for me like illustrating life is like second nature for me. And I kind of I'm constantly thinking in comics and illustrations like the cogs are always turning which is a blessing and a curse in a lot of ways and then yeah people started to become more aware of my work as an artist as opposed to a dj and a radio host and I started getting more music related commissions and I designed my first record sleeve this one was for a foot shooter record on astral black records and I was sent the music at first and I created a whole cafe scene as a response to the music itself and also at this time during the pandemic I taught myself how to use adobe illustrator so this was my first like a big piece of digital artwork and ♪

9:39 yeah I'm always listening to music as I draw and so naturally the music finds a way to seep in ♪

9:47 and I kind of focus on the imagery that lyrics and sounds can evoke which works really well with my work in radio and so for the past five years I've had a regular show on nts radio and through those shows I focus on creating worlds and each year I come up with a new template for the artwork.

10:06 So this was last year's template and I took heavy inspiration from old japanese cds and record sleeves using the obi strip and so yeah I create a bespoke artwork for each show. And this is this year's template and I also create themes around my radio shows so the theme could be informed by the music itself or maybe I'll find like a old 90s a japanese walkman advert and then I'll create the artwork.

10:39 And then I'll create a whole show around the artwork itself and I really love music as an art form because it can be interpreted in so many ways and take on new forms and meanings to each individual and music can soundtrack situations it can sound like special moments and visual art can do exactly the same. And I just love the way that longevity and life exists within these art forms and so these are again some more examples of my nts artwork and both of these pieces were direct responses to songs that I was playing in the show.

11:18 So I'll start off with the one on the left which is a mind design track ♪

12:05 and then the next one is a vex roughing track ♪

12:29 so yeah music always finds a way to seep into my work. And this is a more I guess subtle example but this is a comic from a recent we present instagram residency I did and then yeah another thing that I did last year was my first long-form comic for east london comics and arts festival and the idea for corporate fatigue came about after I got this really fine nibbed pen and I just started drawing like crazy small details like emails on laptop screens and I wanted to create a whole comic around this.

13:12 So I turned to my book of dumb ideas and in there was corporate fatigue written down alongside creative blue balls but I couldn't use creative blue balls so I went with corporate fatigue and created a whole comic around it and yeah corporate fatigue is something that I've experienced at many points in my life. And so I came up with this whole story and wrote out the text and edited it and edited it.

13:40 And then storyboarded it until the narrative and the visuals were concise and corporate fatigue was drawn and colored all by hand which was like a very laborious process but I wouldn't have done it any other way and yeah the response to corporate fatigue was very overwhelming people really related to it. And I don't know it was just very special to be able to create comics with main characters that looked like me and that wasn't something that was the case growing up.

14:14 And so after corporate fatigue I had a big moment of reflection. And I was like looking at all the work that I'd put together I'd made for the past 10 years I was like wait why haven't I put out a senior and so in true anu fashion I self-published a zine in two weeks I got it printed I organized a launch party and got a bunch of press and yeah then came I'm not busy but I'm not free which yeah my debut zine go buy it.

14:49 But yeah we had a launch party friends dj's and I sold a whole bunch which was sick and now crazily enough the zine is stopped at the ica pictured here gosh comics start on a gallery and playgrounds annex in new york and in loads more places it's been included in exhibitions traveling libraries and yeah it's just again had a overwhelming response and yeah just overwhelming that I'm able to connect with people through my art and my work in music.

15:24 And it's something that I've always dreamt of doing as a kid so I'm just very grateful that I get to do this for a living and yeah rekindling my love for my creative practice has brought me back to myself in ways that I couldn't have imagined it's brought me back to my body it's given me a feeling of belonging and a purpose in life and my art is my purest form of expression my art is my home. So I