Community Festival, aka ComFest, will collaborate with Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum and its current exhibit, Tales From la Vida: Latinx Comics, for a special fundraising event. The event will raise funds for CRIS and ETSS, and will feature an opening lecture by Frederick Luis Aldama, curator of the exhibit with Jenny Robb. A series of guided tours during the event will highlight the program.
Admission is free, but we are encouraging a donation to either CRIS or ETSS. The free admission, or your donation, includes access to the entire museum, which will be open specifically for the event. The book, Tales From la Vida, A Latinx Anthology, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama and published by The Ohio State University Press, will be available for sale. ComFest and the Cartoon Library & Museum will have information tables.
About the Exhibit:
The Latinx comics community is growing and diversifying—and rapidly. This exhibition features autobiographical short stories situated within the language, culture, and history that inform Latinx identity and life. The work showcases the huge variety of styles and worldviews of today’s Latinx comics creators, including such legendary artists as Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, Roberta Gregory, and Kat Fajardo. The exhibition is presented in conjunction with the publication of Tales from la Vida: A Latinx Comics Anthology, edited by Dr. Frederick Luis Aldama and published by the Ohio State University Press.
The term “Latinx” was chosen to be inclusive to all creators, whether they identify as Latino, Latina, or prefer not to be identified as a specific gender. The “x” also marks the wound of a shared colonized legacy of exploitation and oppression. With pen, ink, paper, tablet, and computer, these authors and artists shed light on what it means to be active participants in and transformers of the culture, history, and society of the Americas.
In the exhibit, we see how Latinx creators challenge our perceptions, thoughts, and feelings about the ways we differ and share common ground. And, in each story, we see them using imagery and devices that expand on storytelling conventions of Japanese manga, superhero comics, Latin American fotonovelas, digital and fine arts, and much more. In viewing these narratives together, we wake to the extraordinary ways that these unique and idiosyncratic voices give shape to the story of Latinx diversity in the United States.
Curated by Dr. Frederick Luis Aldama and Jenny E. Robb, Curator and Professor, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.