Previous exhibitions - Cécile Bertrand (Belgium)
From 15 april till 17 june 2018
Cécile Bertrand is one of the few women, if not the only one, to have ever held the position of editorial caricaturist in a French-language daily, a position she still holds.
Born in Liège, Belgium, she started in illustration for children after studying art at Saint-Luc school. Also a painter and sculptor, since 1981 she has illustrated many books for young people. In 1989, she began a career as a caricaturist where she quickly gained notoriety with its characteristic style, round and sensitive. With a simple and comical line, she holds a powerful and effective speech using abundant visual metaphors, with short and cutting texts.
Her best-known collaborations are at Vif / L'Express, Plus Magazine and Axelle, a magazine of women's life where she tackles issues from a more feminist perspective.
In 2003, she published a first collection of her press drawings, Women and Children First. Since 2005, she is a cartoonist and editorialist for the daily La Libre Belgique with the series Les Poux. In 2007, she released a collection of her caricatures Les Poux. She also regularly exhibits her plastic works.
She is a member of Cartooning for Peace. She won twice the Press Cartoon Belgium Grand Prix in 2007 and 2011.
Testimony about being a female cartoonist (2013):
"When I arrived at Vif / L'Express in January 1990, I arrived in a editorial office run by men. No, it's not easy. Very quickly, I was told that I was a good colourist (indeed I had been a painter, then colorizing comics to make a living). I took this term more and more as insult to me and my drawings ... I think it remains in the minds of men that women have no sense of humor. My job was a daily fight to impose myself. If I think I brought something to this business, it's poetry in the cartoon. The cartoon is not always funny, it can be deep ... In my beginnings, a friend of my husband told me: "It is your husband who gives you all your ideas!". It was not even a question. It was an affirmation."
From ‘Femmes et humour’ by Mira Falardeau (Hermann editions 2014).
You can visit her exhibition in the ECC from 15 April till 17 June 2018, every Sunday from 10 to 12 am and from 2 to 5 pm. Groups of 10 persons or more are welcome on other days by appointment.
