Lu Fraser’s illustrations of microbes and infodumps are driven by a culture of DIY possibilities

Lu Fraser is a UK-born, Iceland-based artist who describes their work as a “broad mess of illustration based creations”. Starting in an interest in making comics and zines, Lu brought these sensibilities into everything from gallery spaces to noise shows. Noise, sonically and visually, plays a large influence in Lu’s textural gestures, utilising the heavy grains of risograph and walls of speckled ink from print outs and blow-pens – “They’re so bad but I love when my spit has a part to play in my process,” says Lu.

“I really see the world as a big network, extending between the internet and root systems and nervous systems, and the cycles that keep everything whole,” says Lu. “From this I feel a great deal of kinship with the here and now and the then and there.” Lu’s work wonderfully merges the cartoon with the hyper-specificity of informational systems, using them to represent the concept of ruin – trash, death and compost as aesthetics of collectivity and growing together. Lu’s gender transition drives the work politically, using the art as a “vessel for political ideas that I am passionate or angry or scared about” as a way of sharing that emotional space with contemporaries.

“A real pushing point for me to start creating was paying regular visits to stores in London like Gosh! Comics, Waste Store, Books Peckham and archives like 56a Infoshop and seeing the wild stuff that the self publishing world is churning out,” says Lu. Energised by the DIY efforts of the local London scene, Lu was further inspired by artists like Leomi Sadler and Stefanie Leinhos, and now Lu is bringing that optimism for underground comix and zine illustration to Iceland, whose own culture of noise artists and “slimy queer photographers” spiritually share the same aesthetics as Lu’s curious, messy and humorous illustrations. When asked about their major creative influences, Lu answered simply: “3D rotating blender dildos and water. The synthetic and the natural. The deep time and the not-here-yet.” Well said.