Maitena: “There were dissident childhoods that found relief from patriarchal pressure in my humor”

Four giant female figures stand out on the fourth floor of the Kirchner Cultural Center (CCK) in Buenos Aires.

It is the ironic version of female evolution, according to cartoonist Maitena Burundarena (Buenos Aires, 60 years old): a girl, an adolescent with an already developed body, an adult with bags under her eyes and the first wrinkles, and finally, a woman who looks splendid after having gone through the operating room.

The drawing is part of

, the great retrospective exhibition of Maitena, a pioneer cartoonist from Argentina.

“It was hard work.

Only on Sunday did I manage to clean my dining room, which was full of boxes, folders, envelopes, drawings and papers.

I spent six months without a dining room and when my children came to eat we ate where we could, ”recalls Maitena in an interview with EL PAÍS in her house.

She has replaced the long, platinum blonde hair that characterized her for years with a

cut and lights a cigarette while she apologizes for not having fully restored the order prior to the exhibition.

"The great challenge was how to show the small format of comics in such a large place," he says about the old Post and Telegraph Palace, now converted into the largest cultural center in Argentina.

“With Alejandro Ros, who was responsible for the visual part, and Liliana Viola, the curator, we found a way around it, we began to play and have fun,” he continues.

Throughout eight rooms, comics in original size are interspersed with large figures.

There are also sketches and drawing tools that allow us to peek into Maitena's creative process and rooms where the visual mixes with the graphic.

Among the latter is the one with

, which evokes a dark room from the eighties with graffiti, music and some of the erotic drawings he made in those years —”I know that there are groups that stay there on less busy days and I don't know what they do, the museum's caretakers fight to be in that room”, says Maitena between laughs—.

There is also the one from the series

, formed with panels in the form of a labyrinth, a symbol of those women who get lost, those who reach the goal and those who find themselves without an exit.

Exhibition "The women of my life" at the Néstor Kirchner Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.Magali Druscovich

“I get very excited when I go and see that in each of the windows where the comics are, there are ten, twelve people surrounding them and reading.

It's pretty crazy to have made a reading device in this screen age, isn't it?” she muses aloud.

At the beginning of the nineties, Maitena was a young punk, mother of two children and she was making erotic drawings —a subject she never lost interest in— when the women's magazine

invited her to draw on its pages.

The strip

was born there and its success marked a before and after for the cartoonist.

It was published in newspapers and magazines in thirty countries —including EL PAÍS— and was translated into 12 languages.

In 1999

arrived , created for the newspaper La Nación.

From being unknown to the general public, Maitena became a star of Argentine comics.

Ask.

How does the reading of the vignettes change when socializing in an exhibition?

Response.

Something very nice is put together because the women who visit the exhibition read in complicity with other women and laugh at the same things.

The other day they sent me a video of a big lady, well, big, big like me, who was reading and laughing.

Last Sunday, which was Mother's Day here in Argentina, I invited mothers and daughters because my work is permeated by this shared reading, which allowed some of them to talk about controversial issues that were not so easy to bring up and suddenly they found themselves speaking naturally and with humor about those things.

Q.

What topics were controversial when you published them?

R.

When I worked there were no social networks and then it was very different, the other day I talked about it in a talk with Malena Pichot.

Before, I published the strip in a newspaper, in a magazine, in a book and whoever bought it was someone who liked it and received positive comments.

Now, with the networks, I upload vignettes and there are always people who don't like your work and dedicate themselves to wasting time throwing bad vibes at you.

It is something that I did not know.

But there is also something interesting in that speed of response: points of view appear that I had not thought of.

P.

At the opening you mentioned that when reviewing the vignettes you saw that some had become old due to the changes in the female universe and the links brought by the new feminist wave.

Which ones did she leave out?

R.

At first I had that idea that they had become old, yes, but Liliana said that it was interesting to see where we come from to understand where we are and where we are going.

In that sense, I think that

shows the behavior of an era to understand change, why feminism is sweeping.

The germ is there in the drawings: it is disagreement, 'I don't like this'.

Women 20 years ago were tired and fed up.

As a change, I rescue what has to do with the body.

Altered

and

they tried with anger and boredom to hide certain things to correspond to the hegemonic model.

Now, the movements of younger women are more about accepting themselves and saying: 'we don't have to belong to this model of beauty.

We are fat, we have a belly and we have stretch marks and well, we have and we are this and we don't have to hide it'.

Fatphobia is deeply rooted in culture and is the hardest thing to deconstruct

Maitena Inés Burundarena "Maitena" in front of sketches of her illustrations in the exhibition called "The women of my life" Magali Druscovich

P.

When

convened it, I thought it had little to do with the women the magazine addressed.

What made her change her mind?

A.

That was a big surprise.

At that time she was a punk girl who made erotic comics.

She also made grade manuals for children.

So, when they call me from

, I asked myself, what am I going to do?

And it was very interesting because she had a lot to do.

I realized that women are not all the same, but the same thing happens to all of us.

Beyond that we have different lives, there is a small world that we all have in common and I think that's where we met.

I had a house, I had two children, I worked a thousand hours a day, I didn't have enough money and I wanted to find the love of my life.

That happened to me that happened to almost everyone and that was where the bridge between us was created and that began with letters from readers.

Q.

What did they write to you?

R.

One of the most beautiful letters I remember was from a 14-year-old girl who wrote me about a cartoon about a mine that was waxing her mustache, something that was not seen in the humor at the moment.

That girl told me that it was a huge relief because she thought that she was the only one who waxed her mustache, that all the others were hairless and divine and that she had a problem.

That little anecdote speaks volumes about what can be achieved through humor: mitigating pain and being able to laugh at oneself.

Q.

Did you draw and read comics as a child?

R.

I drew my schoolmates and my brothers.

We are seven siblings, I am the sixth, and I drew each one with their characteristic.

The one who fell, with a cast;

the scholar with the books, each one with his clothes, with his hair.

They are drawings that greatly prefigure my range of interests.

I was a big comic book reader when I was a kid.

In my house it was forbidden to read comics because it was considered that this was not culture, you had to read books, but I had some neighbors who did not have a mother and I would go to their house and I would get sick of comics, but none of those comics were written by women They were all written by men.

Until I was 20 years old, when I met Claire Bretecher, and I went crazy.

I said: 'I want to do this' and I went there.

Maitena Inés Burundarena “Maitena” poses in one of the rooms of her new exhibition in Buenos Aires, Argentina Magali Druscovich

Q.

Since there were almost no female comic strip artists, did some readers question whether there was a man or a woman behind Maitena?

A.

Yes. A man wrote me that he didn't know if Maitena was a woman's name or a man's surname.

And I find that reflection very interesting, because after 40 years of working on gender issues, I have less and less clear what is masculine and feminine.

In that sense, something very nice also happened to me last year at the Pride Parade.

I was out there dancing and a divine gay boy, full of feathers and

, approached me and said: 'thank you, because thanks to you I realized what it was.

Your comics said men this, women that and I realized that it was neither of them.

There were many dissident childhoods and adolescents who found in my work a relief from that patriarchal pressure to fit into a model in which they did not fit.

P.

Today there are many female cartoonists.

In one of the exhibition halls, she invited a group, Línea Peluda.

How did that collaboration come about?

R.

It is a great project that began at the time of the legal, safe and free abortion law.

They created an Instagram account and summoned all the cartoonists and the number of drawings, the diversity, was impressive.

They started with my cartoon about abortion and I felt like they somehow gave me a sponsorship that moves me.

When they were girls they came across my drawings and that enabled them to think that they could do it too.

That didn't happen to me.

Q.

What projects are you working on?

A.

In the sample!

But I haven't had any projects for a long time.

I write, not with the idea of ​​publishing a book, but because of the need to write, which is something I have always had and that calms me, does me good and helps me think.

I think I've already worked a lot, that I'm grown up and I like to live and enjoy my children, my granddaughter, my family and the beach.

Likewise, I'm enjoying a lot now meeting my readers again and having them come with girls who didn't know me, but I'm not looking forward to conquest, I'm just enjoying the moment.