The International Book Arsenal Festival continues its cooperation with the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, which will take place on April 8-11 in the city of Bologna, Italy. This year the focus of the partnership is the Talking Pictures initiative, devoted to the visual book and modern book publishing for the adult audience. The initiative is jointly organized by Book Arsenal and BolognaBookPlus, an offshoot of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, that works with the global book publishing.
Within the initiative Book Arsenal and BolognaBookPlus organized raising of visual books from Ukrainian publishers that were published in 2021-2024. The international jury will compile a collection of editions from them, that will be exhibited at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and Book Arsenal-2024, and will also choose a winning book, the author of which will be invited to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in 2025.
For participation in the Talking Pictures initiative, the Book Arsenal team accepted editions that met the following criteria:
- books published by Ukrainian publishing houses and created by Ukrainian authors, illustrators, designers, photographers, etc.;
- books published during 2021-2024;
- books for the adult audience.
Books of the following genres were eligible for submission: illustrated books, graphic novels, comic books, books about graphic design, photo albums, art editions, editions about architecture and design, as well as of other genres and types of publications where the visual component dominates.
During the fair, within the initiative several events devoted to visual culture will take place:
April 8, 2 p.m.–2:50 p.m., Survival Corner — Talking Pictures: Ukraine’s Contemporary Visual Book Production — participants: studios seri/graph and Agrafka
April 9, 3:00 p.m.–3:45 p.m., BBPlus Theater — Talking Pictures: the New Award for Ukrainian Book Design, the Winner and Special Mentions — with the participation of the international jury of the initiative and Oksana Karpiuk, the manager of professional programs of Book Arsenal.
In addition, Pictoric and the International Book Arsenal Festival will present the international exhibition of illustrations When Everything Matters. Inspired by the main theme of the 11th International Book Arsenal Festival, it was presented for the first time at Book Arsenal-2023. The exhibition shows the works of leading Ukrainian and international authors. This project is a dialog of Ukrainian illustrators and graphic designers with artists from other countries and a discussion of important issues in the language of illustration. Curators: Oleg Gryshchenko, Anna Sarvira and Olena Staranchuk.
Let us remind you that last year the International Book Arsenal Festival also participated in the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, more details are here.