The Belgian Comic Strip Center - Museum Brussels

For its very first exhibition of the year, the Comics Art Museum is extremely happy to display in its Gallery a selection of plates from Christian Lax’ new comic book Maternité rouge [Earth-coloured Motherhood]. With his beautifully executed drawings, the author takes us to the Dogon region in Mali and pays tribute to the history of its people. In this moving story, the protagonist follows migrants on their journey and risks his life to save a precious sculpture, which is both a symbol and relic of the local culture.

The Belgian Comic Strip Center takes great pleasure in enabling its visitors to come and discover this remarkable and sensitive comic book that pays tribute to the power of a collective history, its memory and the transfer of related heritage when faced with obscurantism, violence and destruction. In other words, a comic book that conveys a message of hope; an act of a true global citizen. Thank you, Mr Lax, and thank you to Futuropolis publishers!

Mélanie Andrieu, Belgian Centre of Comic Strip Art

In Mali, Alou, a young boy harvesting honey manages to save a 14^th century Earth-coloured Motherhood sculpture from the senseless destruction inflicted by Islamist forces. In the company of migrants and other unfortunate brethren, Alou takes every possible risk to get to Europe. His sole objective and obsession is to entrust the valuable statuette to the Louvre Museum!

Christian Lax enriches the Louvre Museum collection with a politically conscious story, shoulder to shoulder with those who have suffered violence, misery and warfare, and who are making every endeavour to reach Europe in the hope of a better life…

Urged on by his father from an early age, Christian Lax was introduced to the colourful world of comic strip art, and it is also his father who found him his first assignments as an illustrator. He attended the École des Beaux-Arts [School of Fine Arts] of Saint-Étienne and started out in his career in 1975. His first comic book Ennui Mortel [Deadly Boredom] (script by Michel Aubrun) was released in 1981. In 1987, with Des maux pour le dire [Difficulties in Saying So], he told the amazing and candid story of a disabled person, inspired by the life of his own brother. In 1999, he created the series Le Choucas [The Chough], with the script and drawings produced by him personally. Some of the gems of contemporary comic strip art featured in the comic strip collection ‘Aire Libre’ (Dupuis) were created by Christian Lax, alone or in collaboration with Frank Giroud: Les Oubliés d'Annam [The Forgotten People of Annam] (1990 and 1991), Azrayen' (1998 and 1999) and l’Aigle sans orteils [The Toeless Eagle] (2005). And finally, at Futuropolis, he brilliantly concluded his cycling trilogy with Pain d’alouette [Miner’s Bread] and l’Écureuil du Vel’d’Hiv’ [Squirrel of Vel’d’Hiv’], and he also created an outstanding graphic recital with Un certain Cervantès [A Man Called Cervantès], which is a funny and racy tribute to the famous Miguel and his work Don Quichotte.

In 2011, Christian Lax was awarded the prize Le Grand Boum by the town of Blois for his entire oeuvre.

Published by Futuropolis

With the support of the Brussels-Capital Region