A child is lured into the burning world with the promise of bliss, grows up and arrives at a crossroad. There she chooses between love, power and comfort, achieves happiness, then tries and apparently manages to stop time for her and her friends. They reach paradise, but eventually the burning world catches up with them and the wheels of time start turning again. This cycle keeps repeating, the child, now a grown woman, learns that life is made of both joy and sadness and that the ultimate solution is to learn to grow happiness in your heart, in spite of the fire and regardless of the choices made at the crossroads.
Inspired by three Romanian fairy-tales, this book explores the possibility of visualizing life through an imagined cartography. The reader, turned character, tries to navigate the world and manipulate time in order to capture eternal happiness.
The 38 pages book brings together sequential art (both comic panels and flip-book stills), pop-up elements (Turkish maps and floating planes) and a folding map. It was printed and assembled in the artist’s studio.
This book is part of a larger research into the therapeutic value of belief narratives. It started as a live-drawing concert in the context of the 2021 Comic Art Europe grant and residency, then continued with a tarot-like deck and finally, with a book-object, developed over a two years period in the frame of the Helen M. Salzberg 2023 residency (Jaffe Center for Book Art, Florida).
