When Vera was a child, a demon haunted her home and tormented her mother, hammering her nerves until she was bedridden for days. Between sessions of “exorcism” with a meiga and visits to the psychiatrist, year after year, superstition fades away to give way to the diagnosis. But, despite the mistreatment, illness, and eccentricities, the bond between mother and daughter withstands time and the storm.
Created during a residency at the Maisons des Auteurs in Angoulême (France), El cuerpo de Cristo is, above all, a declaration of love from a daughter to her mother, whom she is forced to care for too soon. Beyond the intimate experience, it is also the tragic and universal portrait of a woman trapped in the roles of daughter, mother, and wife, in a patriarchal, poor, and Catholic Spain.
The work, signed by Bea Lema, won the 2024 National Comic Award, and was recognized for its formal approach, its textures and compositions, its humor and poetic gaze, as well as the sensitivity with which it addresses mental health from personal experience and the advocacy of care.
