The illustrator and comic book author Bea Lema has been awarded this Monday with the 2024 National Comic Award for the work The Body of Christpublished by Astiberri, which the jury highlights as “having great depth and sensitivity in the way it addresses a subject as complex as mental health from the author’s own experience, as well as the vindication of the importance of care.” The prize, awarded by the Ministry of Culture, is worth 30,000 euros.
The jury added in the statement, released by Cultura, that the winning work is “innovative, formally daring, with textures and compositions that transcend the most commonly used techniques, without renouncing the use of humor and a poetic look.” In addition to the drawings, Lema includes in this work hand-made embroidery made by herself, the publisher said in a press release.
The ruling also describes: The body of Christ as “of great visual beauty and profound emotion, which 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 vindicating the migrant memory itself.” The Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, has highlighted that “the sensitivity and respect that Bea Lema dedicates to mental health in The Body of Christin addition to its amazing illustrations and embroidery, make this 2024 National Comic Award well-deserved,” the publisher adds.
Bea Lema, who is currently working on the adaptation of this book into an animated short film, was born in A Coruña in 1985. She has done illustrations for magazines, posters and children’s books. Her work, generally autobiographical, deals with themes such as madness, family relationships, religion, trauma and popular rites. In 2017, Lema received the Castelao Comic Award from the Provincial Council of A Coruña for her work. The Body of Christhis graphic novel debut and the first version of the now award-winning book.
The Body of Christ It is an autobiographical project that deals with mental illness from the perspective of a girl, Vera, “in whose house a demon roams around harassing her mother, hammering her nerves until she is bedridden for days,” reports Astiberri.The Body of Christ It is a daughter’s declaration of love for her mother, whom she has to care for at a very young age, but it is also a tragic and universal portrait of a woman trapped in her role as daughter, mother and wife in a patriarchal, poor and Catholic Spain.”
The work was produced in 2022 during a residency at the Maison des Auteurs in Angoulême (France) —the result of the synergy between Acción Cultural Española, the Institut Français and the Maison des Auteurs in Angoulême itself—. The book on which she worked was published in France by the publishing house Sarbacane under the title Evils to say and in Spain by Astiberri with the title The Body of Christ. Was winner of the Jury Prize at the 2023 BD Festival in Périgord and the Audience Prize at the Angoulême Festival; as well as the Bédélys Prize at the Montreal Comic Strip Festival for best foreign work.
The jury was chaired by the Director General of Books, Comics and Reading of the Ministry of Culture, María José Gálvez Salvador, and the vice president was the Deputy Director General of Promotion of Books, Reading and Spanish Literature, Jesús González.
The members were Ana Prada Jiménez, proposed by the Association of Comic Authors of Spain (AACE); Luis Miguel Pérez González, for the Federation of Associations of Professional Illustrators (Fadip); María Bravo Cortés, for the Spanish Confederation of Guilds and Associations of Booksellers (Cegal); Mònica Rex García, for the Association of Comic Critics and Popularizers of Spain; Josep Domingo del Calvari, for the Association of Professional Comic Authors of Spain (APComic); Emilio Gonzalo Mallo, for the Comic Sector Association; Fernando Lara Pérez, for the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando; María Teresa Antona López, for the Federation of Associations of Journalists of Spain (FAPE); Itziar Adelaida Pascual Ortiz, for the Institute for Feminist Research of the Complutense University of Madrid; Ana Murillo Yagüe, from the Ministry of Culture, and Borja González Hoyos, author awarded in the previous call.