A cutting portrayal of the pursuit of work-life balance from the cartoonist of Shit is Real.
A cutting portrayal of the pursuit of work-life balance from the cartoonist of Shit is Real. To achieve the proper work-life balance perhaps we just need the right therapist to coach us through our day-to-day. Anita, Sandra, and Dex have ambitions. Anita wants to move from making utility ceramics to fine art sculpture but her pent up dissatisfaction results in an outburst that puts her studio mate s work at risk. Sandra juggles her practical administrative day job at a startup with her wellness influencer channel, finding both in jeopardy when a messy affair with her coworker comes to light. In another corner of the same startup, Dex s innovative ideas are rejected, leading him to spend his days hacking and working as a bike courier. All three are disillusioned with their daily grinds. As the pressure for self-improvement builds they all end up looking to the same therapist for answers. Soon the boundaries between work and life begin to bleed into each other and it becomes increasingly impossible to find balance. All the solace the characters expect their therapist to provide is obscured by her quirks, whims, and psycho-parlance, leading to sessions that are neglectful at best and actively inhibit growth at worst. In striking colors and trippy transformational sequences, Aisha Franz captures the comedic absurdity of contemporary work-life and wellness culture.
“"A wise and funny journey through loneliness and confusion."-- The Guardian "[Shit is Real] uncannily conjures both a sense of familiarity and displacement. Reality blends with dreams, as well as the hyper charged digital environment."-- Los Angeles Review of Books "Depression and loneliness - and how people cope - are aptly explored through Aisha Franz's often surreal pencil drawings."-- The Globe & Mail”
"The three characters in this vibrant, feverish story endure similar problems: unfulfilling careers, lives that are spiraling out of control and a quirky, uninterested psychologist-for-hire who has left them to handle it all on their own." --The New York Times
"A wise and funny journey through loneliness and confusion." --The Guardian
"Depression and loneliness - and how people cope - are aptly explored through Aisha Franz's often surreal pencil drawings." --The Globe & Mail
"Work-Life Balance remains a funny and pointed satire of modern work culture." --The Comics Journal
"[Work-Life Balance] highlights the lack of separation between digital and analog, as hobbies become jobs, humans become brands, and constant connectivity becomes isolation. Franz's mordant and melancholy graphic novel reveals the irony of 'social' media." --Publishers Weekly
"Although the characters in the book remain unsure of what to strive for professionally, they do find solace in genuine connections with nature, art, and other people -- which, Franz suggests, might be the type of self-care worth pursuing." --Winnipeg Free Press
"In an era of social media and virtual meetings, Franz shows how easy it is for our expectations to become misaligned from... reality." --BlogCritics
"Franz shows the hollowness underneath much of the contemporary art scene, both in what passes for great work and in the ways people talk about that work." --Kevin Brown, Solrad
Aisha Franz is a comic book artist and illustrator living in Berlin. She has published four graphic novels that have been translated into multiple languages and her illustrations have appeared in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Die Zeit Leo, and The New York Times. Her book Shit Is Real was nominated for the Los Angeles Times book Award in 2019. Together with the Berlin-based print studio Colorama she cohosts the residency project Clubhouse.
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