The celebration of the Week for Children’s Rights is an opportunity for BilBOlbul to invite the young French illustrator Bastien Contraire and build with him a project focused on the reflection aboutthemes connected with Gender in relation to childhood. This project tries to explore in a ludic and pleasant manner the theme of children’s identity through an alternation of similarities and differences.

The start-point of the project created by BilBOlbul for the Week for Children’s Rights is Les Intrus, a work by Bastien Contraire, released for the French editor Albin Michel and published in November 2017 for Clichy editions in Italy. It is a imagier which shows in every double page some encyclopedic boards with objects catalogued in different categories. Although there is an intruder in every page which can be confused with all the other objects.In this way, it is possible to create a game in terms of research thatis able to deconstruct the principles through which things are always classified and gathered together. It brings children to wonder which are the criterions that make everyone the same and different at the same time, singular and plural, showing the idea of what a community is for real.

Starting from this work, it is possible to propose a ludic exhibition itinerary through the author’s speech at BibliotecaSalaborsaRagazzi. The itinerary will be constructed through large panels which children can play with, looking for hidden elements or even through other new combinations of objects created for that singular moment by the author. In these he will try to provoke a crisis of the ideas of equality and diversity by way of figures that will be able to induce children to come uponcomplications in the research of the intrusive figures, which in this case will be many. A magnetic board will allow to invent new groups and categories and to play to overturn stereotypes, placing side by side objects that usually would not be pulled together and creating new connections between forms and meanings of things.

The workshop is free and with limited enrolment
Info and enrolments: 051/233401 –  bbbragazzi@bilbolbul.net

In 2008 Bastien Contraire, young French illustrator, founds, together with Romina Pelagatti, Papier Gâché, a publishing house which publishes the magazine of the same name. He starts his career as an illustrator for young adults in 2016 with the publication of the comic book Les Intrus, released by Albin Michel Jeunesse. In 2017 he publishes Les Intrus Animaux. His work combines narration, sense of the absurdity and humour, and is particularly oriented towards the use of artisan and ancient printing techniques such as the pochoir ones.