Back in 1997's Hong Kong, almost every weekend for three months, a man far from home would ride the Central Mid-Levels escalator, quietly absorbing the rolling cityscape on both sides.
That man was Guy Delisle, a budding cartoonist and animator from Quebec City, Canada. During those three months, he worked as an animation director in Shenzhen, a gritty manufacturing hub back then. To escape the dust and the hustle, every weekend he would travel south to Hong Kong – for a gentle ride on the Mid-Levels escalator, and sometimes a moment of stillness at the foot of the Big Buddha on Lantau Island.
Today, Delisle is a revered graphic novelist residing in France, with an enormous body of works in French and English translations, the most famous of which are travelogues including Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China (2000), Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea (2003), Burma Chronicles (2007), and Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City (2008). As his work in animation took him to various parts of the world, a stream of experiences – some eccentric, grueling, or mad – continues to inspire his work, which depicts them always with a charming touch of self-deprecating humor.
His most recent work Muybridge: In a Fraction of a Second (2025) sketches the life of Eadweard Muybridge, a 19th-century English photographer who pioneered high-speed shutter technology to present motion with images. With his usual style of whimsy, Delisle traces Muybridge's bizarre adventures, but also prompts – by the parallel between the photographic breakthrough and today's advent of artificial intelligence – reflection on what AI means for art.
In March this year, Delisle returned to Hong Kong to headline the Francophonie Festival, with an exhibition of his work at Hong Kong Central Library and a series of talks regarding his art.
𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗔𝗽𝗽 ↓
