Conversation with artist Nawel Louerrad
Meeting Nawel Louerrad for the first time coincided with my first visit to Algeria in 2011. An unforgettable experience. Both. I met her first through her six-page comic exploring a world of alienation, questioning, movement, and dance, through a white and blue colour palette and very fine lines.
First panel of Demonsterate, published in English (tr. Canan Marasligil) in Words Without Borders in 2012.
“When I saw this contemporary dance show exploring the act of shaking it all its forms for two hours, with baroque music - a music I am particularly fond of, I realized I was allowed to work differently, the way I wanted.”
Her very specific style immediately got us talking about her lines, which it seems have now become thinner. “Yes, I know, but it is worrying me a bit now, it is way too thin. In my latest work, I have worked differently.” I’m asking her if there is a reason for this stylistic move. “I don’t know. I feel I work better with a thin line. I’m going towards small things. Everything gets thinner, smaller.”
Nawel has always drawn. She has studied at the Architecture School of Algiers and had a very short and unhappy time at the Fine Arts Academy. Drawing has always been part of her daily life. “I have a compulsive hand when drawing and the same things keep coming back”. Her short time at the Academy didn’t influence her drawing, where she did some sculpture before she left for good. Afterward, Nawel moved to Nantes, in France, to attend a school of scenography. Although drawing wasn’t really part of the curriculum, she worked a lot on drawing the stage and the set more than it was necessary, “with great pleasure. I was drawing scenes in a sequential manner. Something happened with the performing arts, especially as I started to watch more and more dance. One show, Alain Platel’s vsprs, has influenced me so much it deblocked something in me: I was less afraid to explore the same themes over and over again. My thinking has always turned around small things but I thought I had to force myself to open up to more, to ask myself other questions, even though I didn’t want to. When I saw this contemporary dance show exploring the act of shaking it all its forms for two hours, with baroque music - a music I am particularly fond of, I realized I was allowed to work differently, the way I wanted.”
This experience opened the way to Nawel’s work in comics, including the use and importance of movement and baroque music, which is clearly visible in her latest work Bach to Black (Dalimen éditions, 2013). After Nantes, and a very short stay at a theatre school in Montpelier where she worked on student plays, Nawel returns to Algiers in 2009.
“I needed to break away from my fears of not creating the perfect work that was going to mark everyone’s minds. I understood that before getting there you need to work a lot and on many different things. It is an exploration. The most important is to remain sincere and to put your heart in it.”
“If I stayed in France, I would have started working as an architect. So I forced myself not to follow that path. Coming back, I turned very quickly to comics. I participated to the first issue of the comics magazine Bendir, which allowed me to meet many people and then I did some short strips for the media, starting with El Watan weekend. Participating to the FIBDA (the International Comics Festival of Algiers) has given me a lot of energy, I have participated to one of their collectives called ‘Monstres’ with one short story, which you have translated into English. When publisher Dalimen asked me to work on a longer graphic novel, giving me freedom with the theme, I accepted because I needed to do it. Also because I needed to break away from my fears of not creating the perfect work that was going to mark everyone’s minds. I understood that before getting there you need to work a lot and on many different things. It is an exploration. The most important is to remain sincere and to put your heart in it.”
2012 was the year of the commemoration of the 50 years of Algerian independence. But Nawel didn’t want to go anywhere near themes about that topic. “I had enough of it, the media kept talking and writing about this, here in Algeria as well as in France. I felt impermeable to that. Then I reflected about it and thought I needed to explore that. Why was I so fed up about these topics? That’s when I have created my very first comic book: Les Vêpres algériennes”.
Les vêpres algériennes (Dalimen, 2012) is also the title of Nawel’s blog, which she started in 2009 and where she publishes more or less regularly. “It is an other space, it belongs to me in the sense that I allow myself to look at my work from a distance. And I can also see how I am evolving.”
Baroque music has a very important place in Nawel’s life and work. “I love listening to baroque music but I don’t really analyze why. Exploring the small and fundamental things in certain motives is probably what interests me the most. Music is central in my life. When I draw, I listen to music. Listening and drawing makes sense to me, I understand what I am doing, it takes me back to the present time. Without music, I get lost, I lose the link with the present moment.”
In that sense, Nawel is like a dancer. “Sometimes I think I would prefer to do theatre. But comics allows me to do some theatre work in a sense. And I am always frustrated not to be able to add music or movement into my books. Theatre can deblock a lot in me. Many texts go together, there are so many tools, from lighting to scenography, to help you tell your story. So I am thinking about it a lot. I also like the collaborative aspect of theatre. However, in comics, I rather work on my own. I really enjoy writing too, I even prefer to write I think. My comics show little text, but I write a lot. Drawing and writing complete, and clash, each other, as a process and in the final work. I like the fact that they can be contradictory.”
Nawel explores language and the importance of silence. In her latest work, silence comes abruptly at the end of the comic. “I get worried to be too poetic and to take myself too seriously. I don’t take myself seriously in real life, but most importantly, I don’t want to fall into certain writing habits. It is not easy to make real poetry. Going towards simplifying things is a danger. This idea fills me with terror. When I re-read my notebooks, I sometimes get worried.”
Philosophy, music, poetry, dance… Nawel’s work is enriched by many different art forms but it especially feeds her process and reflection as an artist. “This is where I take most pleasure, analyzing my own work and being critical towards myself. When I see something wrong in my thinking, in the process, I sometimes add it to the final work. I am trying to get close to a truth, at least my own truth. I don’t want to pretend.”
Recently, Nawel stayed 40 days in residency in Marseille. “I feel the need to travel, to leave Algiers but also to come back. Unfortunately, the world makes this movement, which is very natural, difficult. Coming back is key for me as my roots are my family. It isn’t a patriotic feeling. What makes me love a place is the people. Travel is the same, it is about the need to meet people.”
So I’ve asked her if she could move her family to a new place, where she would want to live, where would that place be. “Argentina. I have no idea why, but it fascinates me. I have never been there. It is linked to music, dance, and a certain lifestyle.”
We ended up talking about the Algerian comics scene and if she thought she was part of it. She immediately answered positively. “Yes, I do. And I think it is very important to be published where you live. Even if conditions are sometimes very difficult, from publication to distribution, and the high cost of books. Despite all that, for me, it only makes sense if my work is published here, in Algeria.”
This interview was originally commissioned by and published in Chronic (Chimurenga Magazine), June 2014.
Writer, Literary Translator, Artist based in Amsterdam.
Canan (she/they) publishes The Attention Span Newsletter, taking the time to reflect, to analyse and to imagine our societies through writing, art and culture; and City in Translation, fostering discourse and conversations around the art of translation.