Joana Escoval e Hetamoé: AUTUMN. The Wind in the Tree. The Wind in the Water.

Four comic books will be published throughout the next years, each dedicated to a season and each featuring a surrealistic short story based on Joana Escoval's dreams. "Autumn / Wind in the Tree, Wind in the Water" is the first of the four seasons, and in it, Joana Escoval invited Hetamoé to collaborate in a manga-specific format.

A work of “global manga,” presented in the Japanese reading direction (right to left), was drawn digitally using programs popular in anime fandoms, like Comipo! and PaintTool SAI. Sound, by means of the onomatopoeias in hiragana (the only text in this "mute" comic), plays a particularly important role in the course of the story.

Based on a dream that Joana had about girls walking in the forest, Autumn portrays the Heroine’s journey and coming-of-age mutations as she follows a Matriarch and her female army among trees, wind, cliffs, and ponds. The bright red dresses, the falling leaves, the mushrooms, and the light reflected on water surfaces and the girls’ eyes envelop everything in fiery autumnal tones, contrasting with the occasional silences and blank spaces. Ambiguity reigns throughout. Are these advancing girls human, or the hive-minded growths of a larger, fungus-like organism? Are their anachronistic dresses à la Marie-Antoinette cloth garments, or their skin? What is the strange, snake-shaped appendix on the Matriarch’s chest? And what of the black stain on the Heroine’s?

As in any dream, Autumn presents a riddle to be deciphered, quietly revealing its secrets upon closer inspection. Still, the answers may drift away, like a leave in the water current.

Title - AUTUMN. The Wind in the Tree. The Wind in the Water.

Authors - Story by Joana Escoval, drawn by Hetamoé

Printed by - Grafica Maiadouro, Porto

Published by - Kunsthalle Lissabon with the support of Vera Cortês Gallery.

Copies - 400

10 € + packaging and shipping costs

ISBN 978-989-98213-6-1 N. DL. 460908/19

The Kunsthalle Lissabon is kindly supported by República Portuguesa / DGArtes, FfAI, Coleção Maria e Armando Cabral.