Belgium’s contemporary comic artists: Judith Vanistendael
Belgian comics are famous worldwide thanks to giants from the past like Hergé and Franquin, but many local artists have followed in their footsteps. In this series, Belga English draws the profiles of four contemporary Dutch-speaking comic artists and graphic novelists with international appeal. Today: versatile trailblazer Judith Vanistendael.
With her debut De Maagd en de Neger (Dance by the Light of the Moon), Brussels comic artist Judith Vanistendael immediately attracted international attention. The two-part autobiographical graphic novel was based on her own relationship with a political refugee from Togo in the 1990s.
Her father, acclaimed writer Geert van Istendael, wrote a short story about his initial feelings of distress about this relationship, which formed the basis for the first part of Vanistendael’s debut. It was translated into several languages and earned her two nominations at the prestigious Angoulême comics festival – for Best Debut and Best Album.
"It was lonely back then as a woman. Things have fortunately changed a lot since my early days but are not yet as they should be"
At the time, in 2007, the comics scene was still very much a man’s world, she said in an interview with The Brussels Times. “It was lonely back then as a woman. Things have fortunately changed a lot since my early days but are not yet as they should be.”
Vanistendael received similar praise for her graphic novel Toen David Zijn Stem Verloor (When David Lost His Voice), in which she uses watercolours to tell the touching story of how the title character and his family try to come to terms with a terminal illness. The book saw Vanistendael nominated for three Eisner Awards, considered the Oscars of the comic world.
For her next book, Mikel (Salto), Vanistendael teamed up with writer Mark Bellido and turned to coloured pencils. Over 350 pages, she outlines the story of a sweets seller with writing aspirations who becomes a bodyguard protecting Spanish politicians from the Basque separatist group ETA.
In Penelope, the gender roles in Homer’s Odyssey are reversed and the female protagonist leaves her daughter and husband behind to work as a surgeon in war-stricken Syria. “I find it very interesting to deal with taboos,” she has said. “Stories, like in comics and graphic novels, are in fact very strong weapons that can change society.”
For this powerful, poetic tale about motherhood, she used paint brushes to develop dynamic watercolour compositions.
In Atan of Kea, part of a collection of comics commissioned by the Louvre, Vanistendael tells the story of an introverted boy with an extraordinary gift for modelling clay on a Greek island around 5,000 years ago. The boy is first forced to abandon his creativity to concentrate on skill and technique, until his teacher recognises that Atan’s muse shouldn’t be silenced.
"Stories, like in comics and graphic novels, are in fact very strong weapons that can change society"
Vanistendael had to wait a long time, but the international praise for her deeply human stories and technical versatility was finally translated into awards. In 2021 she won the Willy Vandersteen Prize for the best Dutch-language comic album with De walvisbibliotheek (The Whale Library).
A year later, she received the Bronzen Adhemar, the most important prize for comics in Flanders. It had been won by only one woman before – almost 40 years ago – and she was the first female artist to win the Willy Vandersteen Prize.
She’s currently working an album about Belgian climate refugees who end up in Norway. “In our region, we always think of the others as refugees,” she said to The Brussels Times. “But what if it happens to us?”
#FlandersNewsService | Judith Vanistendael at the Leipzig book fair, 2024 © PHOTO IMAGO
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