Thanks to her unparalleled graphic and chromatic energy and irrepressible expressive freedom, Nicole Claveloux has always stood out as a builder, and at the same time destroyer, of worlds: her universes are crazy and multifaceted as her techniques and the variety of her stories. They stay adjacent to our reality or, in some cases, inside it.

It is no coincidence that the title of the festival edition concurs with that of the main exhibition: in this way, we want to emphasize the contemporary and forward-looking nature of a fundamental and absolutely atypical figure in the international comic and illustration scene. “Mondi accanto” (Adjacent Worlds), Nicole Claveloux’s first major exhibition in Italy, in the ex Chiesa di San Mattia, is accompanied by the release of the book La mano verde e altre storie (The Green Hand and Other Stories) by Eris Edizioni, the first real opportunity for the Italian public to read her work.

The artist's familiarity with the fantastic and the freedom it grants brings her into contact with the deepest, truest, and wildest part of childhood. Claveloux knows how to be “by childhood’s side” in a place of participatory observation and absolute play, pure, physical fun, heedless of the proper thinking of the adult eye. 

On the side of childhood but also on that of women. In her work girls, young women, and women take their place in society without asking, speaking their minds, doing everything that the male gaze would not want, claiming their bodies, their pleasures, adventures, weaknesses and follies. Reclaiming once again the transformative power of drawing.

It is an opportunity to enter a metamorphic and visionary universe, capable of combining Carroll and feminism, fantasy and childhood.  Thus, comics follow paths that have only recently been recognized in literature—think of Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (Pm pr, 2015) (Italian edition: Le Visionarie, NERO Editions, 2019) , edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer—for their alternative and somewhat prophetic value.