Enki Bilal
Enki Bilal is a prominent graphic artist belonging to the bandes dessinees—a qualification of comic artists interested in the form as criticism—inspired by global tension, often channeling science fiction and the brooding speculation of post-communist politics. Bilal began collaborating with writer Pierre Christin in the early 1970s, predominantly on graphic novels that combined comic strips with photographs. He would go on to work on films, theater sets, costumes, and opera later in his career. Bilal’s images are dense, magically realistic with dark backgrounds, bleak emotional emphasis, and intensely layered narratives. Attempting to destabilize the comic, Bilal put more emphasis on the written text and interior voices in order to augment the role of the reader.
Bilal’s most well-known trilogy of novels, Nikopol, took over ten years to create and was turned into a video game in 2008. The final chapter of Nikopol won Best Book of the Year from Lire magazine in 1993, the first time a comic had been granted such an honor. Bilal was also awarded the Adamson Award for the Best International Comic Book Cartoonist in 1999, and the International Horror Guild Award in 2006 for Best Illustrated Narrative. The artist had a solo exhibition …
Enki Bilal is a prominent graphic artist belonging to the bandes dessinees—a qualification of comic artists interested in the form as criticism—inspired by global tension, often channeling science fiction and the brooding speculation of post-communist politics. Bilal began collaborating with writer Pierre Christin in the early 1970s, predominantly on graphic novels that combined comic strips with photographs. He would go on to work on films, theater sets, costumes, and opera later in his career. Bilal’s images are dense, magically realistic with dark backgrounds, bleak emotional emphasis, and intensely layered narratives. Attempting to destabilize the comic, Bilal put more emphasis on the written text and interior voices in order to augment the role of the reader.
Bilal’s most well-known trilogy of novels, Nikopol, took over ten years to create and was turned into a video game in 2008. The final chapter of Nikopol won Best Book of the Year from Lire magazine in 1993, the first time a comic had been granted such an honor. Bilal was also awarded the Adamson Award for the Best International Comic Book Cartoonist in 1999, and the International Horror Guild Award in 2006 for Best Illustrated Narrative. The artist had a solo exhibition at the Louvre Museum in Paris in 2012, and debuted his video “Inbox” at the 2015 Venice Biennale. He continues to appear regularly in international contemporary art auctions.