Armando Montes de Santiago

For the past 18 years, she has worked on the organizing committee of the FIL, where she was responsible for international sales for many years. She is currently in charge of the General Coordination of Exhibitors and Professionals, as well as other important projects for the FIL, such as the Comic + Graphic Novel Hall and Books to Taste.

Other activities involving the participant:

Opening Ceremony
Opening Ceremony
Opening Ceremony
Presentation of: Foráneo
Presentation of the Pura Pinche Fortaleza Graphic Novel Award

Kike Infame

He is a graphic designer, illustrator, and comic book artist. He is currently the president of Euskal Irudigileak (the Professional Association of Illustrators of Euskadi) and Fadip (the Federation of Professional Illustration Associations).

As an author, he is known for his work as a comic book artist, publishing titles with Astiberri (“El hombre que vino del cielo”) and Dolmen (“Corina y el pistolero,” “Quatroccento”), as well as self-publishing the series Morirse en Bilbao.

He collaborates in various media as a disseminator, particularly known for his work as an interviewer and event organizer. Along with Mikel Begoña, he co-authored the book Komikia about Basque comics (1975-2017). Later, with Álex Oviedo, he co-wrote Irudigileak and Hormetan, books focused on illustration and posters in Bizkaia. He has also published interview-based books: Con los codos pegados al torso with Mauro Entrialgo and Back to Black with Víctor Santos.

Other activities involving the participant:

Social Context: Album and Comic as Engines of Change

Estibaliz Zearsolo

Esti holds a BA (Hons) in Arts & Events Management from Arts University Bournemouth. For 14 years, she has been working with Euskal Irudigileak, the Basque Professional Association of Illustrators. During this time, they have organized a wide range of activities, including workshops, talks, exhibitions, collaborations, and fairs, all aimed at promoting local talent and providing visibility to illustrators. Eight years ago, under the leadership of Elisabeth Pérez Fernández and a team of colleagues, they co-founded Irudika, the International Professional Illustration Fair. Today, they continue to explore new ways to support professionals in the field by recognizing and defending their rights as authors, promoting illustration, and fostering a collaborative and enriching environment for all association members.

Isidro Ferrer

Invitado de Honor

He is an illustrator and graphic designer whose work spans a vast physical and emotional geography. A graduate in dramatic arts and scenography, Isidro Ferrer is a graphic artist in the broadest sense of the term: he is the creator of hundreds of posters, book covers, objects, toys, editorial design, monumental infographics, animated shorts, textiles, brand imagery, sculptures, and lamps. Any medium, technique, or communication channel serves him to express with images his passion for the theater of life.

As an illustrator, he has published over 50 books, including: El vuelo de la razón (1993, Ministry of Culture Award for Best Edited Book); Yo me lo guiso, yo me lo como (1996, Laus Silver Award for Illustration); El verano y sus amigos (1996, Lazarillo Award for Illustration); En Cosme i el monstre Menjamots (2000, Serra d’Or Criticism Award); Una casa para el abuelo (2003, Daniel Gil Award for Illustration; 2006, Junceda Award for Illustration); Libro de las preguntas (2006, AEPD Award and Cálamo Award); Un jardín (2017, Bologna Ragazzi Award Mention); Enciclopedia visual de los sonidos (2022, BRAW Amazing Bookshelf. Bologna Children’s Book Fair); Frankenstein o el Prometeo moderno (2023, National Award for Best University Edition); Piedra a piedra (2023, Ministry of Culture Award for Best Edited Book).

His work has been exhibited in numerous countries across Europe, America, and Asia. He has received the National Design Award in 2002 and the National Illustration Award in 2006. Since 2000, he has been a member of AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale).

Other activities involving the participant:

Design Beyond the Book: Publishers Who Understand Typography

Miju Lee

Miju Lee is a South Korean visual artist known for her sensitive and poetic approach to the subtlety of everyday life. Her work blends illustration with mixed media techniques, capturing fleeting moments that invite introspection.

In recent years, she has exhibited her work in prominent institutions and galleries internationally. Her most recent solo exhibition, Perfect Days, was held at Labibi Gallery in Mallorca (2024). Additionally, her participation in artist residencies, such as the one at CCA Andratx in Spain (2022), has enriched her practice and fostered connections within the global art community.

Her works are part of significant collections, including the María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Foundation and the Solo Collection in Spain, as well as the Art Bank of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea. These collaborations reflect the widespread impact of her art, which transcends borders and cultures.

Miju Lee’s work explores universal themes such as memory, the passage of time, and the small details of daily life, establishing her as a prominent figure in the contemporary art scene.

Araiz Mesanza

Araiz Mesanza (n. 1983) es una ilustradora vasca afincada en Oslo, Noruega. Licenciada en Bellas Artes por la Facultad de Pais Vasco. (Bilbao, España) consta con especialización en Ilustración en la Escola Massana. (Barcelona, España). Y con un Master en Diseño e Ilustración de la Academia Nacional de las Artes de Oslo (Noruega). Mesanza trabaja como ilustradora independiente, con albumes infantiles, ilustración editorial y cómics. Ademas tiene especial interés en la autoedición y el material gafico, lo que le ha llevado a fundar su propio sello llamado Toki press. Un lugar para explorar cómics, narrativas, diseño, formatos y autoedicion y sobre todo para indagar en la frontera entre publicaciones e impresiones.

Francisca Yáñez

Visual artist, illustrator, and designer based in Santiago, Chile. She grew up in exile across various countries, including Argentina, Germany, and Costa Rica. Her work focuses on institutions and publishing houses related to culture, education, and human rights, and is deeply influenced by her childhood experiences of displacement and the blend of cultures and influences. Her itinerant project on childhood and migration, "From a Country Without a Name," travels to different cities around the world. As an illustrator and author, she won the Marta Brunet Award from the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage in 2018.

Yolanda Mosquera

Yolanda Mosquera, licenciada en Bellas Artes con especialidad en diseño gráfico, ha trabajado como docente y diseñadora. En 2013, sus ilustraciones en Caballitos de sal fueron reconocidas con una Mención honorífica en la Feria del Libro de Sharjah. En 2018, ganó el Premio Euskadi de Ilustración. Sus obras han sido seleccionadas en exposiciones internacionales como Ilustrarte (Portugal), BIB (Eslovaquia) y la Feria del Libro de Guadalajara (México).

Higinia Garay

Higinia Garay (Bilbao, 1978). Licenciada en Bellas Artes y posgraduada en Diseño de Publicaciones en el Instituto Europeo de Diseño de Madrid, trabaja como ilustradora y diseñadora gráfica desde 2002, y está a cargo de su propio estudio desde 2013. Además, compagina estas actividades con la docencia en másteres y talleres. Su trayectoria y sensibilidad artística la han llevado a especializarse en temáticas relacionadas con la cultura, la desigualdad de género y la vulneración de los derechos humanos. Es la ilustradora de la novela gráfica Todas nosotras (Astiberri, 2020), con guion de Elizabeth Casillas, y entre sus últimos trabajos destacados se encuentran proyectos realizados para el Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Cruz Roja Juventud, Obra Social La Caixa, Tabakalera Donosti, Farmamundi, Anesvad, Mundubat y BBK Live, entre muchos otros.

Bea Lema

Invitado de Honor

She is an illustrator and comic author. She uses embroidery and weaving as mediums to transfer her images. Her work, generally autobiographical, addresses themes related to madness, trauma, family relationships, religion, and popular rituals.

In 2018, she published O Corpo de Cristo, which won the XII Premio Castelao from the Diputación de A Coruña. El cuerpo de Cristo (Astiberri, 2023), based on the previous edition, has been published in France and Italy, and will be released in Portugal soon. The project was awarded a grant for a graphic novel residency at the Maison des Auteurs in 2022, thanks to Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and the Cité Internationale de la Bande dessinée et de L’image, with the collaboration of the French Embassy in Spain. In 2024, she received the France Télévisions Public Award for this work at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, a globally recognized event.

Other activities involving the participant:

Arpilleras Workshop

Lale Sonja Westivind

Lale is an animator/illustrator based in Pennsylvania, USA. Her work has been published internationally in Kramers Ergot (USA), Strapazin (CH), Lagon Revue (FR), La Cruda Negra (ES), The Lifted Brow (AU), Hidden Champion (JP), and many others. Her animated music video for Lightning Bolt's "Metal East" won an award at LIFF in 2015. She has self-published over a dozen comics and two anthologies. Her comic Hot Dog Beach #2 won an Ignatz Award in 2012. She received a Koyama Provides grant in 2022 to create her comic series Void Packer. Her book Grip has been published in four languages and received critical acclaim. Original artwork from her pages was exhibited at the Formula Bula festival in Paris in 2023 and at the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery in Philadelphia this year. Perfectly Acceptable Press in Chicago published a collection of her work titled Grand Electric Thought Power Mother this year. Her solo art exhibition in Treviso, Italy, with Strane Dizioni during this year's TCBF coincided with the release of a new book titled Becoming Being. Next year, a mural she designed will be exhibited at Philadelphia Airport, and Breakdown Press will publish a new art book titled Hax Memora.

Javier Mariscal

Invitado de Honor

Who, in 2050, will turn 100 years old, is a creator who has worked across various disciplines and on a wide range of mediums without showing any particular preference. Graphic design, furniture design, painting, sculpture, interior design, urban landscape, gardening, horticulture... all are part of his professional and personal activities. He enjoys just as much looking at a painting by Klee as riding an escalator or driving his scooter along a coastal road. Sometimes, he cannot distinguish between an appliance, a person, or a chair; everything has volume, and they are images that think, laugh, and cry. Each image that appears on his retina, each daily experience, is processed without prejudice in his visual memory, and then emerges in his work.

His first comic strip was published in the mid-seventies in several fanzines of the time. He played a very active role in the Movida and the visual revolution of Spanish comics with his characters Los Garriris (1974). He is known for creating Cobi, the mascot of the Barcelona '92 Olympics, and for the sculpture Gambrinus, located at the Moll de la Fusta.

In 2008, he co-directed with Fernando Trueba the animated film Chico & Rita, which was internationally recognized, won Goya Awards, and was nominated for the 2012 Oscars. In 2023, they released their second animated film, Dispararon al pianista.

Gibrán Turón

Gibrán Turón (1988, Villahermosa) es un artista visual multidisciplinario que explora la ilustración digital, serigrafía, pintura, muralismo y más. Su obra revela lo cotidiano y lo urbano, descontextualizando imágenes y objetos para cuestionar la homogeneización de la sociedad. Dirige el festival Dolor Local, plataforma para el arte emergente.

Elena Odriozola

Elena Odriozola (San Sebastián, 1967) es una destacada ilustradora vasca con más de cien libros ilustrados, traducidos a varios idiomas. Ha recibido premios como el Nacional de Ilustración (2015), el Gran Prix de la Bienal de Bratislava (2021) y la Golden Apple (2015). Su obra ha sido expuesta en prestigiosas muestras internacionales, como la Feria de Bolonia y la Bienal de Bratislava.

Maria Barriga

Invitado de Honor

(Spain, 1996) is an illustrator and animator. She studied design at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Her training in animation and illustration was largely self-taught, although she completed her studies in illustration in Belgium at Sint-Lucas Antwerpen, and in animation in Denmark at The Animation Workshop. Her work focuses on seeking a personal expression, free from academic conventions, reinterpreting everything that is "taken for granted." Her art explores the absurd and the dreamlike, blended with everyday life and how it can suddenly break apart.

Tension, humor, and tenderness are elements that always orbit her graphic universe.

She often works in the advertising sector while also developing her more personal artistic projects. In 2024, she was selected to participate in the cross-residencies at the Irudika International Illustration Festival, where she will begin developing her first short film, Próximo destino.

Leire Urbeltz

Invitado de Honor

She is a PhD candidate at the William A. Douglass Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, USA; holds a master’s degree in research and creation in art, and a bachelor's degree in fine arts from the University of the Basque Country. She studied creative illustration and visual communication techniques at the EINA School, linked to the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), and a master’s degree in illustrated children's books at the Escuela i con i in Matadero-Madrid. She has participated in various international residencies, including at the Seoul Museum of Art-Nanji Residency (South Korea), the Centro Cultural El Paso del Norte in Ciudad Juárez (Mexico), and the Manga Art Studio in Beijing (China). She was an artist-in-residence at the Fundación BilbaoArte in 2012, won the first prize at the Encuentros Arte Joven de Navarra in 2015, and received grants from the Government of Navarra's Creation Aid in 2023 and 2016. In 2017, she received a Leonardo Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators from the Fundación BBVA. She has held several solo exhibitions in El Paso (Texas), Bilbao, and Vitoria, and has participated in group exhibitions in Seoul, Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao, Vitoria, Pamplona, Cáceres, Bradford, and Beijing. As an illustrator, she has published several children's and young adult books and designed the image for the Basque Book and Music Fair, among others. She has worked as a muralist for various institutions and urban art festivals. She was a member of the Department of Art Education at the Huarte Contemporary Art Center and an art mediator for the city council of Pamplona, Azkuna Zentroa, and the Communauté d’agglomération Pays Basque-Euskal Hirigune Elkargoa. She has worked as an associate professor at the Public University of Navarra, teaching art education in the primary education degree program.

María Luque

María Luque was born in Rosario and lives in Buenos Aires. Since 2005, she has exhibited her work in museums and galleries in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Spain. She works as an editorial illustrator and coordinates workshops. In 2011, she created the project “Merienda dibujo,” a series of meetings with artists. She is a co-founder of the Festival Furioso de Dibujo. She participated in “Informe, historieta argentina del siglo XXI,” published by Editorial Municipal de Rosario.

She is the author of La mano del pintor, a graphic novel about Cándido López (Sigilo, 2016; L'Agrume Éditions 2017; Lote 42 2019), Casa transparente (Sexto Piso, Premio Novela Gráfica Ciudades Iberoamericanas), Espuma (Galería Editorial, 2018), Noticias de pintores (Sigilo, 2019), and Corazón geométrico (Sigilo, 2022). In 2022, she received a Konex Award, Diploma of Merit in Humor and Comic.

Other activities involving the participant:

Networks between spaces and authors: The importance of the existence of projects that manage and accompany authors
#LeemosCómics con Ana Penyas y María Luque

Miguel Ramal

Invitado de Honor

(Alicante, 1994)

Illustrator and graphic designer educated at the Escola d’Art i Superior de Disseny de València (EASD Valencia) (2016-2021) and the Escola Superior de Artes e Design (ESAD Matosinhos) (2020). His work focuses on graphic communication and experimentation as a visual research tool. In recent years, he has done cultural projects involving different creative disciplines, combining with commercial work.

His work has been exhibited in countries like Portugal (2018, Sao Joao de Madeira), Italy (2019, Bologna), Argentina (2019, Buenos Aires), Uruguay (2021, Montevideo) and Spain (2018, Madrid), (2021, Vitoria), (2022, Valencia).

Violeta Lopiz

Invitado de Honor

(Ibiza, 1980) Currently divides her time between Madrid and Cusco.

She is mainly an illustrator of illustrated books, including: La verdadera historia de la rata que nunca fue presumida, The Forest and Les poings sur les îles. Her illustrated albums have been recognized and received awards from The New York Times & New York Public Library, ILUSTRARTE and the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sport. Thanks to them, she has done exhibits and workshops all over the world.

She has also collaborated with stores like Muji, newspapers such as El Mundo and Expresso in Portugal, and the magazine Iberia; she has also designed illustrations for posters, clothing, premises, murals, lamps, book covers, disc covers and apps. She has created illustrations and animations for the image of a global school (Whittle School & Studios), and has been providing intensive workshops on illustration and creativity for adults for years.

Her last exhibition was in Castelló, titled Violeta in the maze, which describes the convoluted and lengthy process the artist used to illustrate La verdadera historia de la rata que nunca fue presumida.

Mantraste

Mantraste (Bruno Reis Santos), born in 1988, is a Portuguese illustrator and author. He is currently a professor of illustration at ESAD.CR, the institution where he earned his degree in Illustration in 2009 and graduated in Graphic Design in 2013.

He has been involved in several community projects, including “O Meu Bairro do Futuro,” Inminent Community Artistic Workshops in Alta de Lisboa (2021), and “Subimos Junt_s?”, a hand-painted tile panel created with students from APPACDM and E. S. Campos Melo, featured in Wool+, Covilhã (2024). He was also part of the Tasco residency in Viana do Alentejo (2021 and 2022).

He has had several solo and group exhibitions, including “Uma Specie de Livro” at Casa Abysmo (FOLIO 2023) and “Este Fardo Carreguei-o Eu” at Stolen Books (Lisbon, 2020).

In addition to his work on children's books as an illustrator, such as “Voltas e Reviravoltas” by Ana Maria Magalhães and Isabel Alçada (Assembleia da República Portuguesa, 2023) and “Mão Verde II” by Capicua (2022), he has several of his own publications, including “A Sebenta do Diabo” (Stolen Books, 2017) and “The Tree as an Antenna to a Spiritual Revolution” (Stolen Books, 2020).

He views his work as a form of reflection on himself and others, with a continuous interest in expressions of popular art and craftsmanship.

Maite Caballero

Se licenció en Bellas Artes en la Universidad del País Vasco y después estudió ilustración en Barcelona. Suele realizar trabajos de ilustración editorial, álbum ilustrado, carteles, talleres, etc. pero sobre todo ha publicado dibujos e historietas en publicaciones autoeditadas propias o de otros colectivo amigos.

Desde 2014 organiza, junto a los dibujantes Paula Estévez y Mikel Larraioz, la feria de autoedición Guillotina en Donostia. También forma parte del colectivo de cómic Tupust! En 2019 fue la ganadora de la residencia que organiza Encuentro Internacional Profesional de Ilustración en Euskadi Irudika y durante los primeros meses de 2024 ha sido residente en La Casa del Autor de Zapopan.

Martha Saint

Martha Saint (Sushi con K-tsup) es originaria de la Ciudad de México, actualmente reside en Montreal. Se formó como historiadora del arte en el Claustro de Sor Juana. Al mismo tiempo practica pintura de manera autodidacta. Desde el 2016 expone su trabajo en diversas galerías, museos y bienales. En el 2019 toma un seminario en edición y publicación de libros impresos y electrónicos que la encamina a trabajar como ilustradora. En 2022, se muda a Montréal y realiza una formación en diseño gráfico. Martha Saint ha trabajado para clientes nacionales e internacionales tales como Editorial Planeta México, Tierra Adentro, Editorial Podimo, Little White Lies, Liberté y Dieu du Ciel.