Comic soon shows the creative process of the 2024
International Comic Residents Fran Mengual, Lisa
Blumen and Pascale Sévigny-Vallières. Through
highly diverse narrative and graphic universe
techniques, the exhibition runs through their past,
present and future projects.
As part of its Creation Support Programme, Azkuna
Zentroa – Alhóndiga Bilbao undertakes this initiative
in conjunction with the Quebec Maison de la
Littérature and the Angoûleme Cité Internationale de
la Bande Dessinée et de l’image.
Three artists are chosen in each edition, one
from each Centre, to jointly enjoy this Residency
at the three venues consecutively: Angoulême,
Bilbao and Quebec. Getting to know other centres,
questioning their own space and meeting other
people enables them to redefine both their creative
and personal worlds.
Description:
Through narrative techniques and very diverse graphic universes, the exhibition Comic Soon takes a look at the past, present and future projects of Mengual, Blumen and Sévigny-Vallières. In each case, about twenty works are shown, including drawings, poems and prints of already published comics.
Within the framework of this residency, Pascale Sévigny-Vallières has continued her research and creation work initiated around mental health. The Hurluberlus is a poetic comic book project with a variety of characters as terrifying as they are endearing. In it, she chronicles the journey of a person who loses touch with reality from crisis to recovery.
In this exhibition, Lisa Blumen shows Avant l'oubli (L'employé du moi, 2021) and Astra Nova (L'employé du moi, 2023), two of her latest comics, in which she questions in an original, subtle and nuanced way the place of women and their links with virtual life. He also exhibits the creative process of Le sanglier, the project he is developing as part of the International Comic Residency.
For his part, in the work of Fran Mengual, creator of clean lines, synthesized colors, costumbrist and oneiric narrator, everything is real and fiction. Time and ghosts are the protagonists of his work and they are afraid, cruel, victims, silenced and sometimes forgotten.
Like the protagonist of his new graphic novel Alshibha, a stateless character who suffers administrative silence for several years while trying to obtain Spanish nationality and who also cannot return to her homeland, the refugee camps for the people of Western Sahara in Tindouf. Who are you when no one recognizes you? The choice of the title of her new project is not accidental, as Alshibha in Hassani means ghost.
