“The artists that I will show take their comic art and create performance art, create tapestries,” she says. “All kinds of things that I think are very, very impressive and can help people diversify their comic art.”

A cultural value

Born in present day Serbia, Filipovich grew up reading comics produced within and outside the region, including those from France, Belgium, Italy, and the United States. For Filipovich, the region remains a source of “advance art,” some of which have been translated to English, including Croatian Miroslav Sekulić-Struja’s Petar & Liza (The Observer’s Best Graphic Novels 2024).

“There will be a lot of really stunning examples of how you can take comics away from the page, for example, and into textile arts or other types of art as well,” she says.

She attributes this rich culture to the region’s history of having publishing companies that value the comic arts. The cartoonist notes that Belgrade has 50 cultural spaces for art exhibitions, including comics.

“There are not that many spaces here that exhibit art comics,” she says of the local scene. “Things are a bit more commercial, and it’s a different approach between publisher or editor and an author.”

In ex-Yugoslavia, she points out, magazines or publishers reach out to artists. But in Canada, the opposite occurs – some publications even require submission fees.

Filipovich hopes that the Canadian government will provide more financial support for comic artists, recognizing their literary contributions. She notes how the 2021 recognition of Joe Ollmann’s graphic novel Fictional Father in the Governor General’s Literary Awards’ adult fiction category is a step forward.

“Surprisingly, they were always listed in the youth, young adult category,” she says. “I would like to see comics firmly entrenched in that literary category every year.”

Returning to creation

After briefly surveying the region’s comic arts history, Filipovich focuses her talk on Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia. She argues they still share comic traditions.

“After all these wars, it’s funny to see how much the intelligentsia is connected,” she adds. “I grew up as a Yugoslav person, educated to love these other nations in our country and to collaborate with them.”

Filipovich is proud of how these countries’ publishers value artistic standards over nationality when magazines publish authors from different backgrounds. One of these artists is Zograf, who creates comics from stories attached to the items he purchased at second-hand markets, including diaries from the second World War.

The cartoonist herself started her art career in former Yugoslavia during the 1990s after noticing the lack of women creators.

“Rather than just complaining about it, I said ‘You know I can draw, I can write, why don’t I start making comics?’” she recalls.

Upon moving to Canada in 1999, she paused her creative career to pursue financial stability. Only in 2017 did she begin creating again. She soon had enough short comics to publish WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN on Amazon. That led to Conundrum Press publishing her first graphic novel, WHAT’S FEAR GOT TO DO WITH IT?

“In terms of my art, the way I look at it, it’s a connection between me and the reader,” she says. “The reader is part of the art.”

She avoids overexplaining in favour of recognizing readers’ intelligence, allowing them to draw their own conclusions. While Filipovich’s work always conveys a message, she feels it is not necessary for readers to arrive at the same conclusion.

“I want people reading it to form their own story,” she adds. “And that story can be different from person to person.”

Audiences at the Feb. 19 talk will also be invited to flip through graphic novels, comic magazines, and other collections. Parts of the talk were co-presented with Serbian Canadian cartoonist Nina Bunjevac at the 2024 Toronto Comic Arts Festival.

For more information, see www.alcuinsociety.com/events/adventures-in- publishing