Bea Lema does not move away from the vulnerability of autobiography. The new book by the Galician artist and the writer The body of Christ (The body of Christ) is parallel to her own life by growing up with a mother who suffered from a serious mental illness. Illustrated with marker and thread, the book follows the young Vera, who desperately wants to protect her mother Adela from demons who turn and even threaten to end his life. Although it is focused on the pain of a single family, The body of Christ is also the history of women's experiences through three generations in Galicia, Spain, offering more universal meditation on trauma, station and shame.
Stories like lema are often removed by society, but The body of Christ suggests that society is often what contributes to the disease in the first place. The narrative jumps between Vera's youth in the lively city of a coruña in the 80s and 90s and the small village of his mother in the Costa Da dead during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Vera's life is drawn in a pastel marker, while the flashbacks to her mother's past are sewn in black thread, the latter echoing late painter CastelaoRepresentations of rural Galicia from the beginning of the 20th century. Vera's mother is dominated by her abusive and alcoholic father. Later, married and living in the city, she is confined to the education of children, housekeeping and sewing. Adela's debilitating disease is affected by an ineffective medical system, where a series of doctors – all men – constantly decrease and badly manages its pain. Faced with a lack of clear solutions, Adela turns to religion for relief.
Lema presents aspects of the culture of her homeland throughout the rich illustrations of the book – including head nods to Galician pillars as Sargadelos Porcelain and Aim CROUSTILLES – But Adela's religious fervor gives readers an overview of the particularly unique spiritual life in the region. Galicia was a Religious pilgrimage site For centuries, and its deep pagan and Celtic roots allowed its Catholicism a feeling of mysticism, especially in rural areas. Vera visit a folk healer and assist The procession ofwhere those who miraculously avoided death were paraded in open coffins (The ritual has recently been arrested). In another scene, the mother tries to exorcise her demons at Santuario de Nosa Senoora de O Corpiñoin vain.
Although most The body of Christ is rendered in Marker, passages Lema embroiderers which deal with the painful past and the most intense psychosis of the mother. These are often the most tragic moments of the book, but sewing permeates each page with a feeling of continuous care: after all, the embroidery process requires touch, time and tenderness.
Although she is just a child, Vera takes the enormous emotional weight of her mother's disease. After another explosion, this time because Dela started drinking to fight her condition, Lema depicts little from her toys, cradling her mother the size of a doll in her arms. The heartbreaking reversal of the role is only captured by this image and a simple text on the spread: “Yo te cuido, mamá” (“I'm going to take care of you, mom”). Years are passing, and Vera is still the main goalkeeper of her mother while her brother and eldest father remain painfully disconnected. Lema devotes the last part of her book to the goalkeeper's difficulties, the two imbalances between the requests of men and women and the difficulty of taking care of oneself by treating another.
In September, The body of Christ was appointed winner of Spain National comic strip prize. I attended a round table that included Lema in a library In a coruña a month later, and was struck when one of the public members stressed that the author was only the second woman to win the award. Founded by the country's Minister of Cultura in 2007, the prestigious price was granted to Ana Penyas in 2018 for his work We are all good (We are all good). At that time, according to an investigation Of the main comic prices in Spain, more than 90% of prices since the 1980s had historically went to men.
The two authors were recognized for works that highlighted the often neglected stories of women: Penyas on the generation of women who have survived the Spanish civil war and the sexism that followed it, and the complexity of mental illness, family life and healing. The body of Christ tells a story that we do not often hear, and the fact in the unconventional and very personal language of ink and the thread. As with Vera in history, Lema learned to sew her mother, who in turn learned her from her own mother. Although often labeled “women's work”, sewing is both an art and an essential tool for repairing, repairing and beautifying. In this way, it is a meditative form of guardian that extends the life of something very expensive, while offering its creator the space for mental peace.
The body of Christ (2024) by Bea Lema is published by Astiberri Ediciones and is available online and via independent booksellers. A French version of the book was published by Sarbacane editions as Ailments to say.
