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.