Biggest Czech festival of illustration and comics kicks off in Prague
The biggest Czech festival of illustration and comics, LUSTR, kicks off on Friday at Prague’s Holešovice market. Over the next eight days, people will have a chance to visit exhibitions, presentations, and also meet some of the most interesting illustrators and comic creators in person.
LUSTR was established back in 2014 as a community-based event aimed mostly at illustrators and comic creators. Over the years, the festival has grown into a major event, drawing a growing number of visitors from the general public.
This year, the festival’s main exhibition focuses on comics. Called Out of the Streams, it presents ten comics genres on the fringe, including sci-fi, fantasy and horror. One of its main guests is a Berlin-based comics creator Mikael Ross, who will present his most recent graphic novel Der verkehrte Himmel (The Upside-down Sky).
“It’s a fiction, a crime thriller, set in a Berlin district of Lichtenberg, where I worked as a part-time teacher for seven years. I got to know a lot of local kids and teenagers and I wanted to tell a story that happens there. So that’s the fictional part of the story.
“But when I did my research, I also found out that the district has a problem with human trafficking. So I tried to interweave the fictional part with the real problem the quarter has to deal with. It is the first time I am showing parts of my work at an exhibition and I feel very honoured to be able to show it here in Prague.”
Another major exhibition at this year’s LUSTR, selected by the world-famous American illustrator David Huang, is dedicated to the New York scene. There is also a section devoted to the Ukrainian art scene and a showcase presenting young authors from all over the world.
Visitors to the festival can also get acquainted with the most recent works of Czech illustrators and comic creators. LUSTR’s curator Barbora Müllerová says even this youngest generation is clearly influenced by the country’s rich tradition of children’s book illustration.
“When I compare what’s created in illustration here and abroad, that’s such a huge difference. In Czech illustration there were many avant-garde and artistically creative and innovative people, such as Jiří Šalamoun and Květa Pacovská, and I think that our scene is so colourful and playful and avant-garde mainly thanks to them. It’s a great heritage I am really proud of.”
While most of the events take place at the Holešovice market, one of the exhibitions, called Gardens of Paradise, Gardens Desolate, is on display at Prague’s Klementinum, says Ms. Müllerová:
“We started this as a cooperation with the National Library. When they reached to us to create an exhibition for them, I was interested in showing something from their archives. So we chose seven contemporary artists, who created some kind of a visual dialogues with old books from the National Library archive. And since I am interested in herbariums and vestiariums, the topic that I chose were these depictions of nature and landscape in old books.”
LUSTR will run at Prague’s Holešovice market until September 28. More details about the programme can be found at the festival’s website www.lustrfestival.cz/en.
