Silvia Vari is a Ph.D. student in Italian Studies at the University of Warwick, where she is trying to unravel the role that the aesthetic and formal affordances of graphic narratives may embody and convey the transitional experiences of migrant subjects. Juggling between academia and the protean world of comics, an objective of her work as academic lies in the importance of creating (and maintaining) a stimulating dialogue between these two worlds.
Country
Malina Suliman (Afghanistan)
Malina Suliman, a graffiti artist, metalworker, and painter, was born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1990. As a child, she and her family were forced to flee her home province to live in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Her work is considered to challenge traditional Muslim culture like the burqa. According to Suliman, “The burqa is a way of controlling, but in the name of respect. Every culture or religion gives a different name for the burqa. It is honor, culture, and religion. Really, it just controls the woman and keeps her inside.” Malina’s work has gained the attention of the Taliban and traditional Muslims, resulting in having received threats from the Taliban towards Suliman and her family. The artist was subject to physical threats, rocks have been thrown at her as she conducts her work. Not only does Malina worry about the Taliban, but her family who disagrees with her decision to create art. Creating art that displays the human body like Malina’s motif, the skeleton in a burqa, is seen as idol worship. To the Taliban and other traditional Muslims, Malina’s artwork is un-Islamic and Suliman’s parents were embarrassed. Suliman spends her time holding art exhibits around the world.
Daniela Zuluaga (Colombia)
Daniela Zuluaga is a writer and an alternative publisher from Colombia. She is a member of Casa Barullo, which is a zine collective that plays around with the idea of a house made of stories. Currently, she is studying cultural management at the Universitat de Barcelona. She loves how fanzines and other kinds of self-made or artisanal publications are powerful tools for connecting creators among them and with their reading community. She believes that these practices are critical and constitute an alternative to mass-production publishing.
Jean Guichon (Belgium)
Children of the sun, disciples of Baal,
the sixteen apostles of Jean Guichon
spread the good word with the fervor of a venereal disease.
Known for having corrupted all drinking water with KKNRVX,
they have since given birth to the monthly publication “Le Loyer”
with the regularity of a drunken clock and the talent of a sleeping cat.
Since then, they continue to play Indians in space-time, chasing a mad comet.
Matrijaršija (Serbia)
Represented by Paloma Luz Diaz, Matrijaršija (pronounced: mah-tree-yar-shee-ya) is currently a patchwork of various individual and collective living art phenomena from Belgrade, Serbia, the region and the whole of Europe. During its nine years of existence it had become a center of congregation for various authors who joined its non-structured network, as well as acknowledging and encouraging particular existential and working practices, which more and more are coalescing into a specific type of custodianship and preservation of the semi-public status of this type of art and the thriving network in which it exists. The creative output of Matrijaršija is dedicated to recognizing the codes of social roles and structures, in order to allow for their recombination (art and exhibition practices combined with turbo-folk music; urban, intellectual art combined with other fringe territories – music, politics, the media world, the politics and religion of the media world).
Samplerman (France)
Yvan Guillo, aka Yvang, aka Samplerman is a French cartoonist/collagist born in 1971. He started publishing his comics in numerous fanzines in the early nineties and took part in micro published collective projects. Around 2009, he started a shared Tumblr blog “zdnd”, la zone de non-droit (the no-go zone) in order to show some side projects. The digital collages of forgotten and public domain american comics labelled “Samplerman” started there, with continous commissions for comics, illustrations, Sleeves for LP Record from many countries. Samplerman was awarded the Prix de l’EESI in 2019 during the Angoulême festival. He’s currently working on several forthcoming exhibitions, books and mini comics. He lives and works in Brittany, France. Some of his books are Miscomocs Comics, Fearless Colors, Bad Ball and Anatomie Narrative.
Joe Kessler (UK)
Joe Kessler is a cartoonist who lives and works in London. He is the author of Windowpane and The Gull Yettin and is a founder and Art Director of Breakdown Press.
Valerio Bindi (Italy)
Valerio Bindi (1963, Roma) architect, cartoonist and lecturer. He animates the international underground comics festival CRACK! at CSOA Forteprenestino in Rome, and the Fortepressa editions. His latest books are Cosa sono le nuvole?estetica underground autoproduzione (Fortepressa 2019) and Che cos’è un fumetto (Carocci editore, 2021) together with Luca Raffaelli. He’s a columnist for Robinson (La repubblica).
Killoffer (France)
Patrice Killoffer was born on 06/16/66 in Metz, France, to a worker father and a housewife mother. After a childhood between corons, rapeseed fields and steel factories in the Pays Haut de la Meurthe and Moselle, in Lorraine, he was admitted in 1981 to the Duperré school of applied arts, in Paris, from which he was asked insistently to resign in 1985. Since then, he has done a lot of illustrations for the press, publishing and advertising, he co-founded a comic book publishing house, as well as the magazine Mon Lapin Quotidien, and produced, alone or accompanied, some comic books. It also happens to be exhibited for all to see by the Anne Barrault gallery.
Dominique Goblet (Belgium)
Through her work as an author of experimental comic strips and visual artist, Dominique Goblet shakes up the codes and systems of the genres in question, while drawing on the specificities of the mediums, in order to enrich the field of possibilities. Between intimate and fiction, she questions the story and the narration, proposes arrangements of random and sequential stories, real dialogues in images, playing with the codes and structures specific to comics. Her published books include Portraits Crachés (1997), Souvenirs d’une journée parfaite (2002), Les hommes-loups (2010), Ostende, Ostende carnets (2022) and Faire semblant c’est mentir (2007). She also made several collaborations, Chronographie with her daughter Nikita Fossoul, Plus si entente with Kai Pfeiffer (2014) and finally L’amour dominical with Dominique Théathe /(2019). In 2019, she chairs the grand jury of Angoulème and 2020 honors her by awarding her the Töpffer Grand Prize and the Atomium Prize for all of her work. She directs the masters in comics and illustration at the erg and at St Luc Brussels.