Bea Lema (La Coruña, 1985), author of The body of Christ (Astiberri) received the National Comic Strip Prize awarded by the Ministry of Culture to the best work published last year for “being an innovative work, formally risky, with textures and compositions that transcend the most used techniques without renouncing the use of humor and a poetic look.
This is a work about a girl’s mental health, done in sewing. It is based on her first comic strip, O Body of Christ, which won the XII Castelao Prize for Comics from the Provincial Council of La Coruña in 2017, and which he reworked thanks to a grant to complete the graphic novel residency at the Maison des auteurs in Angoulême (France).
It was published in France by Sarbacane under the title Evils to say and in Spain by Astiberri. For this, he received the Audience Award at the Angoulême Festival, the most important event dedicated to comics. He is currently working on adapting this book into a short animated film.
“The book is of great depth and sensitivity because of the way it approaches a subject as complex as mental health from the author’s own experience, as well as the justification for the importance of care,” added the jury.
His work, generally autobiographical, addresses themes such as madness, family relationships, religion, trauma and popular rituals.
For the jury of the prize, the winning work is “of great visual beauty and deep emotion that offers a surprising look at the mother-daughter relationship, being an authentic exploration of language that uses alternative aesthetic resources and shows a new way of weaving history by claiming the memory of migrants themselves.
Composition of the jury
The jury was chaired by María José Gálvez Salvador, Director General of Books, Comics and Reading of the Ministry of Culture; and Jesús González, González, Deputy Director General of Promotion of Books, Reading and Spanish Literature, served as vice-president.
Ana Prada Jiménez, proposed by the Association of Comic Book Authors of Spain (AACE), acted as a member; Luis Miguel Pérez González, for the Federation of Associations of Professional Illustrators (FADIP); María Bravo Cortés, for the Spanish Confederation of Booksellers’ Guilds and Associations (CEGAL); Mònica Rex García, for the Association of Comic Book Critics and Publishers of Spain; Josep Domingo del Calvari, for the Association of Professional Comic Book Authors of Spain (APCómic); Emilio Gonzalo Mallo, for the Association of the Comic Book Sector; Fernando Lara Pérez, from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando; María Teresa Antona López, for the Federation of Journalists’ Associations of Spain (FAPE); Itziar Adelaida Pascual Ortiz, for the Institute of Feminist Research of the Complutense University of Madrid; Ana Murillo Yagüe, for the Ministry of Culture and Borja González Hoyos, author awarded in the previous call.
