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Sara Mizannojehdehi
Illustrator and Digital Storyteller
Public Social Isolation in Toronto
August 2021-October 2021
In August 2021 I took my first ever trip alone. I took the train down to Toronto and spent four days in the city’s core. It was just after pandemic restrictions had loosened for the first time, and I’d saved up to take this trip for a while. During the trip, I contemplated on aloneness and what my future would look like. In 2021, I felt particularly lost and struggled with what I would do after graduating.
I illustrated my journey through field notes in a hand-stitched sketchbook I’d made the night before I left. During that trip, I travelled almost entirely by foot in Toronto and made it to around 85 kilometers by the end of it.
I explored all the exciting and mundane moments of that trip and how I felt about them in that sketchbook.
Within this piece, I looked at how mixed media could come together with graphic novelization to recreate how I felt in Toronto.
A lot of the work I did was experimental, with media I was unfamiliar with and bold colours I don’t often use in traditional artwork.
I pasted in additional drawings and sketches and worked on it until October finishing up the sketches I’d drafted on my journey.
In December 2021, I converted the book into 16-page zine that doubled as a poster and sold several copies of it.
