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Donostia-San Sebastián. The Basque illustrator will visit the Fête de la BD – Strip Feest, for the fifth time, an important event for comics that runs from today through Sunday in Brussels.  The festival offers a variety of programming with workshops, presentations, round tables, conferences, and exhibits in a space where editors from all over Europe show their catalogues and novelties.  Every year, some 100,000 visitors come to see some 250 authors, including this year, Basque illustrator, Asisko Urmeneta, according to the Etxepare Basque Institute.

Basque participation at the event was made possible by EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture), a network that the Etxepare Basque Institute is also part of since 2015, along with a close collaboration with the Delegation of Euskadi at the European Union.  EUNIC will also have a stand in the international pavilion, where representatives from Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Israel, Finland and Portugal will be available and where attendees will find a large number of titles in Basque, and Spanish created in the Basque Country.  Professionals and editors in the area will also have the opportunity to get better acquainted with Basque production through the publications and various publishing houses that will also be available there.

The Basque creator invited this year is Asisko Urmeneta.  He will participate in two festival activities, both on Saturday, September 14^th.  On the one hand he will teach a workshop in French at 11am entitled “Caricature, Graphic Design and Sequential art.” On the other hand, on the same day he will teach another workshop at 4pm, this time along with Portuguese illustrator and EUNIC member Paulo Monteiro: “Creating Comics When You Don’t Know How to Draw,” which will be offered in both French and English.

During the day, some of Urmeneta works will be exhibited in the adjoining stand, along with various works done by other invited EUNIC artists in hopes of showing the public the diversity of graphic works in the territories participating in this network.  In addition, all of the guest artists from EUNIC will have a moment during the festival where they will autograph books: in the case of Urmeneta AztiHitza (2018).

Since becoming a member of EUNIC Brussels, the Etxepare Basque Institute, along with the Delegation of Euskadi in the European Union, has worked intensely to promote cultural diversity, and has actively participated in transnational projects, like the comic festival in Brussels, or the Transpoesie, poetry festival also celebrated in Brussels that will begin on September 26^th with the participation of Basque authors such as Itxaro Borda, Bernardo Atxaga, Harkaitz Cano, Luis Garde or Juanjo Olasagarre.