elisha lim art and storytelling
Drawings & Comics
The Comfort of Queer Family Wisdom 2013
Every year I print a queer calendar in tribute to my thrilling, gorgeous, risk-taking queer community. This year’s calendar has brought the most tender and touching responses that I’ve ever had. It’s called The Comfort of Queer Family Wisdom, and it’s a diary of my role models. I wrote this calendar because I left Toronto [...]
Commission an original portrait to keep forever.
Commission an original Elisha Lim portrait of someone you love, or of yourself, or a special event to keep forever. I can typically draw a draft within 48 hours. Choose one of the following styles, and send an email with a high quality photograph (I want to see tear ducts!) to elisha.chwee.cheng at gmail.com. All prices [...]
Queer Pioneers
Diva Magazine, UK, 2008 – 2009 I was commissioned to draw comics about dead lesbians.
Memoirs of a Queer Child in the Eighties
Sweetest Taboo ran as a comic strip in Capital Xtra!, November 2009 – June 2010 This is my comic about all those moments of 80s pop culture that made me go “ew weird…”
The Illustrated Gentleman
I asked queers to take me shopping with them, and then we took pictures of their favourite outfits in the changerooms. The Illustrated Gentleman Wall Calendar was named top Christmas present of the year on afterellen. Oh yeah!
Sissies and the Femmes that Inspire Them
Every month brave and beautiful queers talk about sequins, glitter, femininity, insults, courage, happiness and femme pride. It features the international queer community, and models from London, Berlin, Montreal and Toronto each express their own identities, which I kept in their own words. SISSY is proud to be part of Bitch Magazine’s top 9! “Sissies to [...]
Books
5 current and pending titles including Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme ed. Ivan E. Coyote and Zena Sharman. Arsenal Pulp Press 2011. One in Every Crowd by Ivan E. Coyote. Arsenal Pulp Press 2012. The Biopolitics of Mixing: Thai Multiracialities and Haunted Ascendancies by Jinthana Haritaworn. Ashgate Press 2012. First Spring Grass Fire by Rae [...]
Globe and Mail
2011 April 6: Single Dad 2012 January 4: Bully 2012 February 16: Clutter 2012 April 17: Black history month
Freelance Design
Design and layout for annual calendar for Montreal art gallery “articule”, including hand drawn articule wallpaper I illustrated and designed these book covers: I watercoloured and designed the cover of the 2012 Montreal collaboration between SAVAC, articule and La Centrale.
Portraits
this was inspired by my sister’s article in The Guardian I’ve been really interested in detailed traces lately. At the beginning of my art practice I delighted in bright colours, and I left the tracing aspect at a relatively basic level. Nowadays I get a lot of satisfaction out of slowly, gradually building volume and [...]