Displacement is the natural syntax of Yvan Alagbé, a french-beninese author among the most influential authors of alternative comics and co-founder of the publishing house Frémok.

Alagbé is a great writer – as shown by Negri gialli e altre creature immaginarie (Canicola, 2019) and École de la misère – and an even greater re-writer: he rewrote the Woyzeck, the play by Georg Büchner, setting it in Africa; he rewrote the fumetti neri (black comics) of the 1960s (Diabolik, Demoniak, Sadik) turning them into a parody reflection on the colonial heritage; he even rewrote the Gospel, adding a female protagonist to it.

Alagbé deconstructs and rebuilds, shows the darkest corners of contemporary imagination and it does so with a scorching process, because its images boil, become alive, moving and changing.

«Writing a history of love means rewriting History itself. A history of love is a history of religions, a history of art, a history of stories» writes Yvan Alagbé in his Apocalypse des oiseaux, his ambitious – eight year in the making and still ongoing – project: to tell the universal history of love in one visual book.

The first exhibition entirely dedicated to Yvan Alagbé in Italy is named after this impossible book, which accurately sums up Alagbé’s artistic vision.

From the unsettling realism of Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures to Demoniak‘s provocations to the impossible task of drawing the history of love, this  exhibition is a journey both artistic and political, intimate and universal that rewrites the boundaries of the comics medium.

curated by Squadro Stamperia Galleria d’Arte
supported by Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, Libreria Stendhal – Roma, Canicola

The exhibition originates from the original short story  Yvan Alagbé wrote for the Italian edition of Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures: a series of screen-printings that tell the unlikely but true story of a suitcase forgotten on a train.

With Yvan Alagbé, Miguel Angel Valdivia

Moderated by Alessio Trabacchini

In collaboration with Canicola, Coconino Press – Fandango

The talk is in French, with consecutive translation

with Yvan Alagbé, Tiziana Lo Porto

supported by Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, Libreria Stendhal – Rome, Canicola, Festival La Violenza Illustrata

During the past eight years, Yvan Alagbé has embarked in the impossible mission of drawing a universal history of love. His book project – still a work in progress – is also a deep reflection on the role women have played in this history. This talk with Italian journalist and translator Tiziana Lo Porto will shed light on the most radical and revolutionary message of one of the greatest contemporary comics authors.

The talk is in French, with consecutive translation

with Yvan Alagbé, Wu Ming2

in collaboration with  Erasmus Mundus in Culture Letterarie Europee, Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, Libreria Stendhal – Roma, Canicola

Yvan Alagbé was born in 1971 in Paris and spent part of his childhood in Benin. Returning to France to study mathematics and physics, he met Olivier Marbouf: together they founded the association Dissidence Art Work (DAK), with which they published the self-produced journals “L’oeil carnivore” and “Le Cheval sans tête”. In 1993 they published their first comic book story, Ville Prostituée. The following year they founded their own publishing house, Amok, which would join in 2002 with the Belgian association Fréon, creating Frémok, one of the main comic book publishers in Europe today. His short story collection Nègres jaunes et autres créatures imaginaires (Frémok, 2012) was published in the United States by the New York Review of Books in 2018, and in Italy by Canicola in 2019.