“The advantage of an exhibition like this is that there are lots of possible and different entry points into my work,” rejoices Nine Antico

Until Sunday January 28, the Saint-Simon hotel in Angoulême is presenting, as part of the 51st international comics festival, a retrospective of the resolutely feminine and feminist bibliography of Nine Antico, which also includes cinema production.

At 43 years old, Nine Antico seems to be enjoying greater recognition, with this exhibition as part of the Festival, and after a year 2023 marked by his new comic book Madonnas and whoresconsidered one of the best in recent months.

Alert and in good shape in the beautiful Saint-Simon hotel in Angoulême, which she has invested with her work for four days, she worries about whether her parents, who have come to visit her, will be able to enter the building before leaving. give us a few minutes.

Franceinfo: Finding yourself like that, exposed during your lifetime, does it give you a feeling of emotion, pride, nervousness… Or a bit of everything at once?

Nine Antico: I have adrenaline pumping! I had a little trouble sleeping and coming back down. Something is happening with this exhibition, which is already a great privilege here in Angoulême. Seeing people of all ages, all types of audiences, waiting in line… Obviously, it’s galvanizing. The exhibition curators and scenographers, who knew my work very well, organized the themes and the alternation between colors and black and white. We moved forward together, but we knew that we didn’t want an exhibition of only boards, because when I go through a comic book exhibition myself, I find that it’s hard to concentrate if there are too many. .

Does a piece in this exhibition particularly resonate with you?

Clearly my fanzines, these notebooks from that period when I compulsively and almost bulimically drew everything I loved, and little by little it began to touch people and attract attention. There is really this exchange in drawing, people look and comment and it helps to continue, like a child who is encouraged to draw when surrounded by him. I drew in the evenings, in concerts, and people were around my drawing, I felt like a photographer, and I came from there, from this rapid drawing.

This week, director Justine Triet confided to franceinfo that the most beautiful and moving moment for an artist is when his work escapes him and others appropriate it. Do you also experience this kind of thing?

Yes, but it’s recent. I experienced it a little with my film Playlist (2021), and it’s true that now I have a slightly wider audience. Coming from alternative comics, black and white, something perhaps forbidding, I had a community. But the advantage of an exhibition like this is that there are lots of possible and different entry points into my work, perhaps more pop, and I am struck by the eclecticism of the people who are around us to come and visit it. But I can’t really complain knowing that, from the beginning, the press has supported me, and that I continue to publish the things I want to do. My trajectory was ultimately rather simple.

Posy Simmonds, Grand Prize of this 2024 festival, says that she is happy to have infiltrated a “boys club” and a comic book environment that would be very, too, masculine. You who publish things dealing a lot with femininity and the male gaze, have you had to confront this context?

I think there was a total ingenuity on my part, arriving in this environment through alternative art, and it is finally now that I realize certain things, following the rhythm of society itself which question and think about these kinds of things. We say to ourselves that there weren’t many women authors before, in fact, while women were there, existed, and of course had things to say. I think it was complicated before for some to persist, to allow themselves to be artists, without even talking about being recognized. Yes, today I am much more aware of it, but I didn’t think about it when I started.

Exhibition “Nine Antico, room with a view” as part of the 51st Angoulême International Comics Festival, on view until Sunday January 28.