Hidden Treasures: Young Readers Soar with Swayam Parekh’s Fantastic “Greenhouse”

Attention India
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May 10, New Delhi, India: “Greenhouse,” the latest picture/comic book by illustrator Swayam Parekh, explores the arduous process of self-discovery. The wordless book, which has 44 pages of coloured pencil and graphite illustrations, is aimed at young readers and fans of abstract fantasy.

In the narrative, a girl and her dependable dragon travel to different places in an effort to find a set of keys that she had previously but had misplaced. The protagonist must enter the house after these keys unlock the door and it calls to her. They eventually make their way back to unlock the door and allow what is inside the house to reveal itself. Along the way, they encounter a bizarre cast of characters who may or may not be helpful.

Swayam examines inner turmoil via her central characters. “I wanted to create a book that talks about our relationship with our inner selves for a younger audience,” the author says. “Greenhouse” is about coming to terms with a sense of self-disconnection. The book’s concept originated with the notion of having to rebuild without closure or clarity. I used fantasy as a tool to talk about my experiences, which are somewhat based on my own and lighthearted. After experiencing a wave of unexpected, continual change, I detached myself from myself and eventually had to reestablish that lost connection from the beginning.

Greenhouse is remarkable not only for its poignant narrative and endearing visual aesthetic, but also for being almost entirely wordless. Swayam chose this strategy because the narrative is dense but straightforward, and dialogue could have made it less focused or slowed down. “I wanted the reader to experience the book and think about it, what it meant in their context, and draw their own conclusions from it,” she says. “Adding words would have interrupted the point of the story and distracted from the flow of experiencing it.”

The largest challenge in creating Greenhouse was figuring out how to convey the plot, characters, and locations without using words, but Swayam was happy to put his trust in both the process and the audience. “I think at some point I accepted that parts of the story would be ‘open to interpretation’, and that’s okay; it would add another dimension to the narrative,” she says.

Swayam, who was born in Bombay, draws inspiration for her writing in the book from both her domestic travels and the city’s native vegetation. After relocating to New York to pursue an MFA in Illustration at the School of Visual Arts, she started to hone her distinct drawing style. She can clearly see now how her work has been influenced by the comics she read as a child, such as Amar Chitra Katha, Tintin, and Calvin and Hobbes.

When questioned about what made her decide to travel and pursue her artistic career, she responds, “I was an in-house artist at Louis Vuitton Mumbai before I moved to New York.” I held this position for the longest time in the nation. In addition to designing blueprints for personalised trunks to be constructed in France, I painted artwork that customers requested for opulent trunks. The position was fantastic and gave me a lot of opportunities; I learned a lot of corporate culture and acquired a lot of technical expertise. But I felt like it restricted my creativity to what I had to do, and I had no idea how I could develop as an artist. Even though I enjoyed my work, it was very difficult to leave to pursue additional education in a foreign nation where I would only know uncertainty. However, it was exactly what I needed to develop my artistic voice.

Swayam wants to integrate comic book format with narrative illustration language through her work. Her stories are vivid, visually striking, and intensely personal because they draw on her personal experiences. She mostly works with traditional materials because it connects her to the work and helps her feel more connected to it; it’s how she uses these materials that sets her apart. In addition to writing her own stories, she has illustrated comic book writers, painted murals, produced children’s picture books, and had her work displayed at cultural centres.

As part of Swayam’s participation in the Artist in Residence programme at Mi Centro cultural centre in Brooklyn, original artwork from “Greenhouse” has been on display at the SVA Chelsea Gallery in Manhattan.

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