Josune Urrutia Asua, Senior Fellow 2025-2026, will be presenting her research on the exploration of cancer through comics at the second conference of the Ouvertures lecture series. Registration is required to attend this conference.
Suelo Espiral by Josune Urrutia Asua
Exploring illness through comics
What role does drawing play in understanding, coping with and moving beyond cancer? This question lies at the heart of the work of Josune Urrutia, a comic artist who overcame cancer 15 years ago. Her experience with the disease has transformed her artistic practice into an exploration of the capacity of graphic narratives to create spaces for interdisciplinary exchange and discussion, to better confront cancer in our society.
This artistic encounter is a unique platform for examining the artist’s career, which brings together reflections on illness, health and culture, as in her book Hoy no es el día (published in French by Cambourakis in 2024 under the title Ce n’est pas encore le jour).
This debate highlights how artistic practice, and especially the form of drawing, are tools for reviving imaginary worlds and tackling the social, political and environmental challenges we face today.
This conference is being chaired by Anyssa Kapelusz, lecturer in theater studies at the Laboratoire d’Études en Sciences des Arts (UR 3274).
Practical information
- Date: Thursday, December 11th, 2025 from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm
- Venue: Maison des Astronomes conference room, Iméra, 2 place Leverrier 13004 Marseille
- Language: this conference is in French.
- The room can only accommodate 50 people. Registration is therefore mandatory.
This conference is the second in a series of three conferences, taking place at the rate of one per month between November 2025 and January 2026. The next conference takes place :
- Thursday, January 15th, 2026: The price of democracy – Globalisation, economic crises and political change: a historical perspective by Asensio Robles-Lopez, Adjunct Professor at the Pontifical University of Comillas, Madrid, Spain.
Past conference :
- Thursday, November 13th, 2025: When anti-racism became postcolonial: the anti-racist turn of the 2000s between colonial memory and the “race question” by Itay Lotem, Senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster, London, UK.
These meetings will continue in the second half of the year (between February 2026 and June 2026) with three new residents.
About the Ouvertures lecture series
The Ouvertures lecture series is aimed at teacher-researchers, doctoral students and curious and passionate citizens, with the firm intention of keeping open and bright a space of intelligence, curiosity and collective discovery in an increasingly dark age, in which these kinds of spaces are shrinking or disappearing.
In the Ouvertures lectures, international scientists and artists in residence at Iméra will offer an insight into their research on sensitive subjects, conducted without taboos and with honesty.
