Loose Canons is a series in which we invite artists we love to share five things that have informed their work. Meet the rest of our Loose Canons here.

Jennifer Cheuk is a mixed-Hong Kong Chinese writer, artist, and the Editor-in-Chief of Rat World Magazine. She is currently the Guest Curator for the New Zealand Young Writers Festival where she hopes to bring traditionally underrepresented forms of writing to the forefront. Jennifer is working on an independent publishing press for visual narrative texts and is also in the process of editing an anthology about mixed-heritage creatives in Aotearoa.

Graphic Novels

If you ask what I’m reading at the moment, 99% of the time it will be a graphic novel. I have been reading graphic novels, sophisticated picture books, and visual narrative texts since I was a kid. The interplay of visuals and language, the way that story can be encompassed in non-linguistic cues, the way form is experimented with - I will always be captivated by graphic novels. I just finished Ultrasound by Conor Stechschulte and am still in shock by how versatile this medium is! I think the way graphic novels utilize inference and ellipses (whilst still feeling so visually compact) are a really big influence on how I create. I like the dichotomy of spaciousness and crowdedness. Maybe this speaks to having grown up between Aotearoa and Hong Kong.

Honourable mentions include: The Arrival by Shaun Tan, Acting Class by Nick Drnaso, and Crash Site by Nathan Cowdry. Also Old Master Q (老夫子) by Alfonso Wong.

Music

I generally listen to two types of music - I categorize these into Chaos Music and Nostalgia Music. Chaos music is when I want to feel one of the following: fear, aggression, violence, anger, disruption. Swans, Throbbing Gristle, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Oneohtrix Point Never are reliable picks here. Nostalgia music consists mostly of Michael Jackson, music from the movie Full Metal Jacket, and 80s Cantopop. I have a God Complex about my music taste.

Conversations

I like it when people talk. The movies and TV shows I enjoy are full of people talking over each other, yelling, or completely missing the point in every conversation they have AKA The Meyerowitz Stories: New and Selected. I also listen to people talk when I’m out and about. Be careful.

Independent Publications

I’ve been collecting indie magazines, zines, comics, arts publications since I was very young. Something about holding the paper in my hand, feeling the bind and the ink, is incredible to me. I love the way publications manifest intention in a tangible way - I can feel whether a magazine has a larger or smaller margin because of the amount of the pages. Every tiny choice contributes to the personality of the publication.

Hong Kong (香港)

Perhaps not just the place, but also the embodiment of Hong Kong through food and language and family. I love to watch my mum and dad banter in Cantonese - it’s just so different from English. It’s rude and it’s loud and it’s fun. The humour I have and the way I interact with the world around me is informed a lot by Hong Kong.