The 8th International Meeting of Graphic Narratives Dibujos que Hablan (Drawings that Speak) will take place from 9 to 16 January 2023.

This year Drawings that Speak invites us to reflect on violence in comics, cartoons, illustration, and other drawn narratives. The meeting will be held in a hybrid format, and international visitors will return, this time from Peru and Sweden, who will participate in the on-site activities, including the Editorial Fair at Casa Palacio. In addition, the exhibition “Viñetas de mar y valles, historieta nueva de la región de Valparaíso” (Vignettes of the sea and valleys, new comics from the Valparaíso region) will be on display in the same space. This year the meeting, which is financed by the Book and Reading Fund 2022, extended its duration to one week due to the large number of proposals received in the call for entries.

Dibujos que Hablan was born in 2015 with the aim of thinking and reflecting on the relationship between our societies and the arts of drawn or graphic narrative, including related disciplines such as comics, graphic humour, illustration, animation, muralism, graffiti and visual experimentation. Each year DQH focuses on a special theme, and on this occasion the call was centred on violence, which has been the protagonist over the last few years in different areas and concepts. Different disciplines have questioned the possible meanings of this concept, from a way of acting on the part of a hegemonic power, to considering it as a force that manifests itself in human relations; from positions that consider that violence can be shown “transparently”, to those that consider its unrepresentability. “From this perspective, in this call we prefer to speak of violence rather than violence, which considers the possible paths that arise from the different conceptual positions. Naturalised, normalised or institutionalised, or feared, denounced and condemned”, says Jorge Montealegre, director of the editorial committee of the Dibujos que Hablan collective.

ACTIVITIES AND GUESTS

Due to the increased production, study and research of graphic narrative that has been developed not only at the local level, the eighth version of DQH received more than 60 proposals, which is why it was decided to incorporate a greater number of activities and increase its duration to one week. There are 35 round tables, workshops and international talks in which the representation of victims and perpetrators in comics, feminisms and marginalisation, representations and resistance to violence, political and state violence, and racism and territories in comics, among other topics, will be reviewed and discussed. The face-to-face activities will take place at the National Library, the USACH Cultural Corporation and the cultural space in formation Casa Palacio, all located in the centre of Santiago. All presentations will be shown live on DQH’s Facebook and YouTube.

Our international guests come from Peru, they are Brenda Román, illustrator, cartoonist and social communicator and editor of the comic magazine made only by women “La Otra Damita”; Avril Filomeno, illustrator with studies in painting and printmaking at the School of Fine Arts in Peru; and Carla Sagástegui, PhD in Art, Literature and Thought from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. All of them will participate in the workshop “Déjame que te cuente” (Let me tell you) and in the conversation “Genealogías” (Genealogies) together with Brígida magazine. Carla Sagástegui will give the keynote talk “La diversidad posible”. “This year, we chose Peru as our guest country, with three outstanding exponents of the neighbouring country’s artistic and academic scene. Thus, the comic artists Avril Filomeno and Brenda Román, outstanding exponents of the Peruvian feminist fanzine, together with Carla Sagástegui, an academic specialising in the production and distribution of Peruvian comics by authors, will give us an overview of the current scene of authors in Peru, and will provide tools for the self-managed production of comics”, explains Paloma Domínguez Jeria, member of the DQH organising committee.

Jorge Varas “Varilla”, renowned Chilean visual artist, illustrator, cartoonist, graphic designer and writer based in Sweden since 1982, will join the Peruvian guests as an international guest.

The national guests will participate in different activities, most of them in the Second Fair of comics, fanzines and graphic narratives “Dibujos que Hablan” (Drawings that Speak). From the region of Valparaíso we will be visited by Shantal Andrada – Shantalix; Sebastián Castillo – Pezarbóreo, who together with Alison Saravia Oritz, an illustrator living in Chiloé, will be participating in a virtual conversation on “Comic strips and artistic projects from the territory”; Radye Silva, Cristián Díaz – TEC, and La Kioska, a project that was born in December 2020 in the streets of Valparaíso where they sell independent material, publishing houses from different parts of the region, material from graphic artists with author editions, fanzines of different formats and themes. Juan Carlos Cabezas – Jucca, creator of the famous character Anarko, joins us from Talca and will be interviewed at the DQH 2 Editorial Fair.

EXHIBITION AND PUBLISHING FAIR

On Saturday 14th January at Casa Palacio, located in Alameda 2133, the second Editorial Fair Dibujos que hablan de historieta y fanzine will take place, featuring: Amonite.art, Alvarex, Rocco, Majo Puga, Marcos Rojas, NecrotaX, Toto Duarte, Pablo Delcielo, Shantal Andrada and Verena Urrutia. The Fair will be open from 12:00 to 20:00. During the Fair there will be an exhibition of fanzines and the following activities: a conversation between Cristián Díaz TEC and Radye Silva, Jorge Quien presenting “Mansión Masticante”, from RIL Editores, Brenda Román presenting the magazine “La otra damita N°5, Pablo Delcielo presenting “Común y Silvestre 2”, Hugo Hinojosa’s interview with Carlos Cabeza “Jucca”, the conversation of the international guests and the magazine Brígida and the inauguration of the exhibition “Viñetas de mar y valles. New comics from the region of Valparaíso”, which will be open to the public until 31 March 2023 in the USACH Visual Arts Hall located its interior of Casa Palacio. Current creators of comic strips and comics with works referring to the region of Valparaíso will participate in the exhibition.

On Friday January 13th between 11:00 and 12:00 there will be a collective Fanzine Workshop given by the Peruvian guests Avril Filomeno, Brenda Román and Carla Sagástegui and on Saturday 14th at the same time the workshop “In magic comics” for children from 5 years old accompanied by an adult, by the illustrator Verana Urrutia in the premises of the USACH Cultural Corporation (Av. Ricardo Urrutia).
Corporación Cultural USACH (Av. Ricardo Cumming 89, Santiago).

All activities are open to the public and free, and can be seen live on Facebook and Youtube @dibujosquehablan and https://dqh.cl/.
Participation in the workshops is by registration on our website https://dqh.cl/dqh8/talleres/
For more information about the programme and schedule visit https://dqh.cl/