Kai-Yu Sun

Kai-Yu Sun has taken a concept which started with Charles M. Schulz and Peanuts and lifted it to unimagined heights; that is, the ability to work through childlike (not childish) images and kick start powerful emotions and values. By the use of simple cartoon images, the author illustrates life's most basic problems - great and small - and almost poetically furnishes equally simple solutions. Sheer brilliance.
Mike Hallowell, The Shields Gazette

Yaya’s world is our world; without the fuzziness, or maybe with a fuzziness of its own. We all want to live in it, because in a way we have been in it; but through Yaya’s eyes and experiences we might be able to experience what we have missed the first time. Yaya’s adventures become for us an instrument of discovery; of what we thought we knew, although as a matter of fact we didn’t. For this reason, our enjoyment is to be seen as a sudden celebration of ignorance; or the realization that we still can live our everyday moments from scratch, and defeat repetition by changing the angle of view. As a character, Yaya has the ability to let us identify with her without making of her a copy of ourselves; because she goes through what is drama and suffering for us with the ease and nonchalance of a comic figure, always well poised on the rope of her own life. What threats Yaya, can be a threat for us too; only that in the context of her world threat becomes minimal, almost abstract, as an exercise in the philosophy of the absurd. A cartoon character, on the other hand, is mostly threatened by her own medium; because people expect her to behave in a certain way, when getting involved in certain adventures or with certain other characters. Cartoons are often associated with children and simplicity and two-dimensionality of being, or a world where it is always easy to draw the line between light and darkness, good and evil, us and them, above and below. As a matter of fact, Yaya’s world is a kid’s world; but only because it tries to filter out all contamination due to our adult stereotypes, automatisms and routines; a world in which the right thing isn’t to find the proper answers and solutions, but to ask the right questions and be able to see the cracks, the fracture marks, the imperfections. Yaya’s essence is questioning the order of things not by refusing them, but through experiencing them in their thoroughness and by rejecting whatever frame of experience is being imposed on her; including language itself. These cartoons might even have a morality tale to tell; but they stop at the last moment and try to hide the lesson behind a smile, or ingenuity of an absurd situation; or even the reduction of danger and threat into mere farce. The public might be able to read through the lines and feel ethically challenged; but only to the extent that we perceive ourselves as different from Yaya’s people. There are quite a few of these; quirky and unpredictable, but always faithful to their childish core and in any case, consistent with Yaya herself; as these people make up the world that has given shape to Yaya uniqueness. Finally, Yaya’s world has to be consumed slowly, like good wine; it often happens that the meaning of a single cartoon changes, as this cartoon becomes part of series; just like the words that change meaning inside a poem. The viewer will sooner or later notice a certain linearity, or a narrative line that transcends the single work, to flow along the creative process itself.

-- Ardian Vehbiu, writer

On the outside The World Through Yaya’s Eyes appears to be a children’s story book, but in fact is more a philosophical look at life, for adults.
Kai-Yu Sun has created Yaya – a profound Chinese Duck - to get her message across. We must all live together on this planet, and as night follows day there are moments of sunshine, followed by rain. Yaya finds the courage to face them all.
Read the illustrated book - The World Through Yaya’s Eyes - from front to back, then turn it over and read from back to front. There is more than one way to deal with rainy days, Yaya shows how to stay afloat through the sunshine and the rain. The Chinese Duck is a philosopher, she does not give up nor does she give in.
Published by Apex Publishing Ltd. UK, The World Through Yaya’s Eyes is a reflection of life. A great coffee table book!
.au