Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2012


Cristina Amodeo, graduated in Visual Communication, shows her Balsamum project

Nowadays Bologna Children’s Book Fair is the most important international event in Europe dedicated to the children’s publishing. Every year it organizes a prestigious exhibition hosting more than 70 illustrators ready to renew the imagination of the books on the market.

One of the young illustrators, positively judged by the severe international jury, is Cristina Amodeo, IED Visual Communication Milano former student. She presents her project “Balsamum“, a collection of images of really existing animals with funny and unpronounceable names like the Dromiciops gliroides.

With these words, Cristina describes her project: “The project comes from the idea of taxidermy, from Latin “In Balsamum”, i.e. dipping in balsam. Balsamum takes inspiration from those illustrated encyclopaedic volumes telling about old and unmoving animal bodies and interprets them in a new way. A careful and curious travel that retraces, reorganizes, and readjusts a primitive and ancestral practice. A way to illustrate that replaces the traditional materials of taxidermy with the scissors, the glue, a pencil, and the cardboard.”

You can virtually see her illustrations at: http://cargocollective.com/amodeocristina#2365774/Balsamum

Or you can personally observe them in Bologna during the Fair that will take place from 19th to 22nd March 2012: http://www.bolognachildrensbookfair.com