The comic book publisher Kuš! has released artist Ingrīda Pičukāne’s book Feminae Explorarum, in which the author hallenges expectations of femininity, offering a richly subjective and feminist perspective on what it means to truly observe and exist. Alongside the comics’ main characters — women — the forest also plays an important role in the stories, becoming a space for reflection.
Feminae Explorarum comics are often set in vibrant forest worlds, inhabited by women engaged in quiet, personal acts of exploration. Blending myth and realism, the stories embrace states like menstruation, drunkenness, and solitude as meaningful experiences rather than trivialities. The forests are neither untouched nor idealised — they are tangled spaces of nature and human debris, magical and reflective.
«I have developed my own style of comic storytelling inspired by mediaeval art and based on continuous narrative — showing repetitive characters in one frame that is not divided into panels. That allows drawing long panoramic views and showing the landscape as a separate character,» says Ingrīda. The book was printed at the Jelgavas Tipogrāfija printing house using Pantones, which make the colours particularly vivid, bringing the printed drawings closer to the originals.
Ingrīda Pičukāne has graduated from Janis Rozentāls Riga Art School, the Visual Communication Department of the Art Academy of Latvia, and the Animation Department of the Estonian Academy of Art. She has been active in the field of comics for over 15 years and is a regular contributor to the Baltic comics magazine Kuš!. In 2016, the artist released her first comic book, Three Sisters, which received positive reviews from comic critics around the world. In 2023, the comic book Zaļais Ceļojums (Green Journey) was published, created in collaboration with artist Vivianna Maria Stanislavska.
The Feminae Explorarum comic book is available on the Kuš! website, as well as at the Part Time gallery, Down Street record store, and Zuzeum Art Centre.
Viedokļi