About

Suus Agnes is a tumbleweed who blows around and picks up bits and pieces encountered on her way. She swims in aquatic melodies, sings with insects, grows flowers, and creatures have been pouring out of her for some time now. As an author-illustrator she started making zines, comics and other visual narratives, and has showed them in diverse places, like comics & zine festivals, exhibition spaces, journals, and online platforms - first in New Zealand, then internationally. Her work takes an interest in human-nature relationships and unloved creatures, like insects.

I like to venture to the barely imaginable, to where things become clouded,
and hold them for a while — give them a spin.

I am interested in the joys and difficulties of sharing spaces with other creatures. Different knowledges colour my perceptions: folklore, ancient narratives, contemporary ecological knowledges, and sensory experiences fuel the imagination. From flowers to parasites to parasitic flowers, a mix of curiosity and endless not-knowing leads me to playful views on the place of humans interwoven with all the other creatures.

Nature is not a backdrop to human life. There is a place for laughter and awe amidst the disgust. There is growth with the rot. A spark of imagination through an unexpected encounter. Small creatures are a lot more intelligent, sensitive, and flexible than usually given credit for. Entangled and often ironic, we must keep finding arrangements for living together. Mixing play and the serious, I wish to contribute to a broader recognition of creatures in all shapes and sizes, not just for their ecological importance, but also as lively, aware, full of story, and for whom things matter. 

I like to look for the outer boundaries of what constitutes a comic: my work breaks free from the perfect square panels. I love expressions that combine painting, poetry, and/or natural history as if they never needed to be separated — medieval miniatures, bestiaries, and early 20th century avant garde fire my imagination.

The uncomfortable, the wondrous, the underdog.  Then there are dreams, odd observations, the beauty in the mundane, and life’s absurdity.