AT FESTIVAL
In the Trame bookshop there are original storyboards and prints from Migrando, Mariana Chiesa's book that was published by Orecchio Acerbo in 2010 and made in collaboration with Amnesty International.
The life of migrants and exiles, human relationships, and social problems are some of the topics that the author touches upon. The story was born out of real life experiences. Mariana Chiesa is the daughter of immigrants and she has retraced the journey in reverse, the one that took her parents from Europe to Argentina.
The book is divided in two closely related parts: the immigrants from another period- Italians, Spanish, Irish, Polish, French who boarded ships bound for the Americas. Then there are the new immigrants that come to Europe from Africa and the Middle East on small rafts. These migration stories have at least one major thing in common- water. Water that separates and then reunites the stories and destinies of people struggling for a new life. The drawings are colored silhouettes, fragile boats thrown into the sea, characters who can fly with a bird's wings or like an airplane. The author is able to create these fantastic elements convincingly given her belief that man, like animals, is a migrating species.
The life of migrants and exiles, human relationships, and social problems are some of the topics that the author touches upon. The story was born out of real life experiences. Mariana Chiesa is the daughter of immigrants and she has retraced the journey in reverse, the one that took her parents from Europe to Argentina.
The book is divided in two closely related parts: the immigrants from another period- Italians, Spanish, Irish, Polish, French who boarded ships bound for the Americas. Then there are the new immigrants that come to Europe from Africa and the Middle East on small rafts. These migration stories have at least one major thing in common- water. Water that separates and then reunites the stories and destinies of people struggling for a new life. The drawings are colored silhouettes, fragile boats thrown into the sea, characters who can fly with a bird's wings or like an airplane. The author is able to create these fantastic elements convincingly given her belief that man, like animals, is a migrating species.
BIOGRAPHY
Mariana Chiesa Mateos was born in La Plate, Argentina in 1967. In 1997 she moved to Barcelona and since 2008 she has lived in Italy near Bologna. She works as an illustrator for editors all over the world: Media Vaca, Zoolibri, Sinsentido, L'Association. Besides Migrando, her most memorable books include Mis pimeras, 80.000 palabras, a collective work published in 2001 for Media Vaca for which she also created the cover, and Tipos ilustrados, published by Cromotex in 2004. The book No hay tiempo para jugar was awarded a prize by the Biblioteca Internazionale di Monaco in 2005 and was published in Italy by Zoolibri with the title Non c'è tempo per giocare.