3 minute read
Love Impossible _ Catarina Sobral _ p. 59 _ Joana MosiNot All Cacti Have Spines
by Centrala
Not All Cacti Have Spines
Joana Mosi
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Just like a house plant, friendship is something that needs to be taken care of to keep it alive. Luísa and Rita have been best friends since they can remember, but as they get older, something begins to threaten their bond. What does it mean to know someone? What does it take to keep our memories true? “Not All Cacti Have Spikes” is a short story about friendship, plants, growing up but also growing apart.
“Luísa and I met in primary school and we’re best friends since then. We have always been a little different, that’s why I think we complement each other. But I like to believe that I know her better than anyone. Luísa brought a lily that day. And she wasn’t wearing earrings.”
Joana Mosi (1994) is a visual artist, author, and educator. She graduated in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon and is currently finishing her master’s degree in Film. She has authored a number of comic books, some of which have won distinctions, including the autobiographical mini series Altemente (ComicHeart, 2016) and Spineless Cactus (Octopus, 2017). In 2020, she was included in the international anthology Kus, with the project „Everything’s Gonna Be Okay”. In the last two years, Joana has focused a large part of her activity on initiatives and projects related to comics, education and literacy. She has collaborated with several institutions, including the National Reading Plan and the international projects ReadON and Comics for Education (KUS). She was the coordinator of the Concept Art course at ETIC, in Lisbon, for three years and is the present Comics teacher at Nextart, also in Lisbon. Since 2020 she has been collaborating with The Animation Workshop in Viborg (Denmark).
Lonely Journey
Ida Rørholm Davidsen
In this spell-binding lon, a young girl struggles to fit in, subconsciously mimicking her mother’s lonely existence. Her interest in the computer game, Lonely Journey, becomes an obsession, but it also becomes a means to reinvent herself. In the virtual reality, she can escape and live out her dreams. Slowly reality and virtuality start to merge.
With her debut, ’Lonely Journey’, Ida Rørholm Davidsen portrays the young Anna’s loneliness and outsider status – the result is believable, heart-breaking and real.
The Ping Prize
In sensitive and playful pencil drawings, (...) (she) portrays the fundamental worries that older children struggle with in a socially demanding multi-player-everyday life.
4 hearts in Politiken
Ida Rørholm Davidsen is an illustrator and artist educated at The Royal Danish Academy of Design in Copenhagen, private drawing teacher at Glyptoteket, and got a Debutant scholarship from the Danish Arts Foundation. She works with various kinds of drawings, paintings, books and visual storytelling, and her main interests are children’s books and analogue illustration. In 2019 she won the prestigious Ping Award in the category „Best YA publication 2019” and was also nominated in the category „Best Danish Debut”.
