Beauty is a Wound is an Indonesian fiction novel written by Eka Kurniawan in 2002.
The epic novel Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan’s gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his young nation’s troubled past:the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; the 1965 mass murders of perhaps a million “Communists,” followed by three decades of Suharto’s despotic rule.
(http://ekakurniawan.com/books/beauty-is-a-wound)
Since Beauty is a Wound has complicated content to readers found from the connotation meaning, diction, etc. I intend to help them by creating illustration in every main scene.
There are 20 illustrations for the content and an illustration for the family genealogy. They are mainly made to help readers in understanding the story and characters. Derived from own research, I found that collage can offers unique approach to illustrate the story because its eclectic and surreal characteristics.
In creating the collage illustration, I created the sketches first, then searched the sources to be used. But if I didn't find anything related to the sketch, I usually did digital imaging to the source especially in creating figure suitable with the story. For example is like the image below.
Process of tweaking source
20 final inside illustrations
Illustration of Family Genealogy
About the cover, I created manual typography of Beauty is a Wound by using lipstick on plastic to gain natural appearance, then it's enhanced digitally. The concept itself is to show that it seems like a portrait of Dewi Ayu (the character on front cover) in a frame is vandalized.
Process of creating the cover typography
Overview of Beauty is a Wound illustrated novel
Inside of Beauty is a Wound illustrated novel
