The Exile Tarot features a calm yet poignant aesthetics with its gentle color palette and a duo of romantically intertwined designs. "Exile" is a metaphor for life, alluding to the nature of human existence as an unending quest of identity-building and rebuilding: we must break in a labyrinth of trials and errors and mend our fragmented selves in a perpetual cycle of renewal. Each time of bidding farewell brings us incrementally closer to a state of fulfillment.
To capture this bittersweet journey of growing up, each card is drawn twice. In the "Silent" version, all figures are featureless with erased faces. In the "Awaken" version, they have their eyes open with lively expressions. The names "Silent" and "Awaken" not only describe the characters but also the energy states of each scene. The depiction in "Silent" is dormant with dark undercurrents, while "Awaken" uses more lively and vibrant brushstrokes to depict the same scene, thereby creating two either progressive or complementary visual experiences.
