What does site-specificity mean in comics? La Ballade de la Mer Salée is a remake of a colonial classic of graphic literature based on the celebrated series of the Corto Maltese adventures penned by Hugo Pratt. The book is a fac-simile of the Casterman edition, whose production was entirely commissioned to a person of undisclosed identity, born and currently living in the Polynesian archipelago, the semi-fictional geography of the original storyline. Tracing each page of the book becomes an act of retaliation against the ghosts that constructed and perpetuated a colonial view of the world where the superiority of Western Christian values become fodder for an entire genre of white man comics and his nineteenth century colonial adventures.
Belgium: La Crypte Tonique | 168 pages | softcover edition | 2020 | 210mm x 297mm