Ada
Book not yet available in English
Summary:
An ignorant and authoritarian father, a woodcutter, lives with his daughter on the edge of a forest. His daughter, Ada, is the victim—misunderstood and mistreated—on whom he unleashes his aggression and frustration. The girl has talent and curiosity for painting, but her father despises art and intellectual work. Ada soon realizes that confrontation does not pay off and, apparently submissive, cultivates her passion in silence and without her father’s knowledge, with the help of a student she met at school years earlier. The two do not see each other, but exchange books, drawings, and paints, which they leave in a place unknown to others. For Ada, painting represents a parallel dimension of freedom and a real path to empowerment, leading her to self-awareness.
Edited by: Centro MeTRa - Università di Bologna (Italy)
Comment:
““Ada” is Barbara Baldi’s second work, winner of the French and prestigious Artémisia prize. This book is, to all intents and purposes, a graphic novel, combining the rare and sparse dialogues between the (few) characters with surprising illustrations of rare pictorial beauty. Those, almost paintings in their own right, are enjoyable even when observed individually and not just as a whole. They are created using a technique that combines watercolors, pencils, and digital media. Most of the vignettes show melancholic, cold landscapes in dark colors, at times even disturbing, reminiscent of the dark times of World War I. Above all, they are a reminder of the protagonist’s sad life, humiliated and treated like a servant by her father, isolated from the rest of the world in the middle of a forest that cuts her off from the city. Her only salvation is painting, which she manages to cultivate by escaping to Vienna from time to time, encouraged by her friend Egon (Schiele). But Ada is also a story of resistance (as written in the dedication) and empowerment, which unfolds in silence and tragedy, in the name of courage and hope. A harsh and powerful work that cannot leave readers indifferent. “