Who would we be if the war never happened?

After twenty years in the United States, Nora Krug goes back to Germany, her homeland, to look for an answer.

The reflection on displacement, the theme BilBOlbul 2019, originated from Heimat, Krug’s latest graphic novel, internationally acclaimed as one of the most important books of the past years.

Heimat is an exploration of memory conducted with the rigor of a scientific experiment: for years Krug has collected and sorted documents, relics, photographs, in an attempt to reconstruct the story of her family and understand its role in Nazi Germany.

The result is an autobiography built as a visual encyclopedia that deales with national identity, guilt, and the trace  history leaves on the lives of common people.

Heimat is a German word that refers to the place of origin, where every person develops their own identity. Like memory, identity is fragmentary: a set of experiences in perpetual movement.

The exhibition follows the logic of the fragment: original drawings from Nora Krug’s graphic novel Heimat (Einaudi, 2019) are shown next to photographs, manuscripts, relics from Nazi Germany and documents that she  collected during her long research. Because objects, just as writing and drawing, carry with them the idea of past and history.

curated by Strane Dizioni
supported by Goethe-Institut Rome, Istituto di Cultura Germanica Bologna, Giulio Einaudi Edizioni, Strane Dizioni

Before her internationally acclaimed graphic novel Heimat, Nora Krug has experimented with drawing and illustration. Nora Krug: Eine Retrospektive follows her work back to her debut, proving just how far visual narration can go when it springs from a fertile mind.

With Nora Krug, Chiara Sambuchi

In collaboration with Erasmus Mundus in Culture Letterarie Europee, Goethe-Institut Roma, Istituto di Cultura Germanica Bologna, Giulio Einaudi Editore, Strane Dizioni

With Nora Krug

In collaboration with Goethe-Institut Roma, Istituto di Cultura Germanica Bologna, Giulio Einaudi Editore, Strane Dizioni

Nora Krug tells the story of how her graphic novel Heimat came to be. The story of a German family becomes the history of a whole country, depicting an intimate portrait of Germany during Nazism.

Nora Krug is a German-American author and illustrator whose drawings and visual narratives have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde diplomatique and A Public Space, and in anthologies published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Simon and Schuster and Chronicle Books. Krug was named Moira Gemmill Illustrator of the Year and 2019 Book Illustration Prize Winner by the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her visual memoir Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home (foreign edition title Heimat), about WWII and her own German family history was chosen as a New York Times Critics’ Top Books of 2018, as one of The Guardian’s 50 Biggest Books of Autumn 2018 and Best Books of 2018, as an NPR Book of the Year 2018, as one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Memoirs of 2018 as one of Time Magazine’s 8 Must-Read Books you May Have Missed in 2018, one of the San Fransisco Chronicle’s Best Books of 2018, one of the Boston Globe’s Best Books of 2018, and for the January 2019 SWR Bestenliste. It was the winner of the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award (Autobiography Category), of the 2019 Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, the 2019 Art Directors Club gold cube and discipline winner cube, the 2019 Literaturförderpreis of the city of Aalen, the 2019 Evangelischer Buchpreis, and the Ludwig-Marum-Preis. Krug’s illustrations have been recognized with gold and silver medals from the Society of Illustrators, and her visual biography, Kamikaze, about a surviving Japanese WWII pilot, was included in Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Comics and Best Non-Required Reading. Krug’s work has been exhibited internationally, and her animations were shown at the Sundance Film Festival. Krug is Associate Professor of Illustration at the Parsons School of Design in New York City.

nora-krug.com