NEWSLETTER
is a duo consisting of Mayumi Otero and Raphael Urwiller. Together, they work as authors, artists and publishers and are engaged in various projects that encompass illustration, graphic design, exhibitions, publishing and teaching. They have published multiple art and children’s books together that have received the Honorary Mention of the Bologna Ragazzi Award and the Prix Libbylit Bruxelles award. Their clients include Le Monde, New York Times, Canal + and Wired. Icinori work and live in Orleans (France).
Website: icinori.com
Instagram: instagram.com/_icinori
Jindřich Janíček was born in Znojmo, a city in the south of the Czech Republic. He studied animation at Tomas Bata University in Zlín and subsequently completed a Master’s degree in illustration at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. For the past ten years, he has worked full-time as an illustrator, winning the Czech Grand Design Award for the second time in 2023. Together with his wife, graphic designer Nikola Janíčková, he is the co-founder and director of the independent publishing house Take Take Take.
lives and works as an illustrator and cartoonist in London, Ontario (Canada). In his work, he repeatedly links to psychedelia and alternative realities and masters social fears by presenting them in a bizarre and kaleidoscopic way.
(she/they) was born in 1991 in Spain. She is an illustrator and educator with a MA at the Kunsthochschule Kassel (Germany) in Visual Communication with focus on Illustration and editorial Design. Together with Kathi Seemann she initiated the project Papiercafé, a multifunctional collective space for Self-publishing & Café in 2014. She joined the independent publishing house Rotopol as co-publisher and author in 2016 when her first book “Allé : Hier” was published. In 2017, she worked as part of the Aneducation team of documenta14 in Kassel and Athens (Greece). In October 2018 she moved to Rotterdam (Netherlands) for an artist residency at BAD Foundation and later on at NAC Foundation in the Wielewaal where she worked on a experimental research around critical thinking in visual education thanks to the research grant O&O from CBK Rotterdam. In July 2020 she initiated together with Kamiel Verschuren (NAC) the sociocultural greenhouse space Growing Space in the Wielewaal neighbourhood of Rotterdam. Since November 2020 she is a teacher and researcher in the Illustration and Social Practice departments at WDKA Art University in Rotterdam. As an illustrator and educator Carmen José is interested in questioning the reproduction of visual stereotypes, with a focus on embodied processes. In her work she aims to facilitate spaces for dialogue and coming together.
Jeong-in Mun is an illustrator and comic author. She was born in 1998 in Jeju, South Korea, and majored in illustration at the HEAR (Haute école des arts du Rhin) in Strasbourg. Inspired by the works of Munch & Gorey, she delights in creating black & white ink drawings using dip pens. Her works often discusses questions of identity and belonging. She was selected for the Bologna Illustrators Exhibition in 2023 and is a member & editor of the comic collective FRED and its comics anthology’s namesake. “Long Breath” is her first graphic novel, created during an artistic residency at the Maison des Auteurs in Angoulême.
Nina Kaun was born in Kassel in 1975. After she got her diploma as an art therapist at the FH Ottersberg/Bremen in April 2005, she has been studying visual communications specialised in the fields of illustration at the School of Art and Design Kassel from 2005 to 2011.
Julia Kluge was born in 1989 and works as an illustrator and artist in Leipzig. She studied communication design at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle and completed a master’s degree in illustration at the Berlin University of the Arts. Her illustrations and comics have been published and shown in multiple books, magazines and exhibitions. Julia also gives workshops on (comic) drawing and accompanies events as a graphic recorder.
The Illustration/Comics department at the Kassel University of Art and Design has been shaped by Hendrik Dorgathen since 2003 and has produced many talents. Since 2025, it has been under the direction of Marie Pohl and Sascha Hommer.
(she/they) studied Visual Communication at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee. Her clients include The New Yorker, The New York Times, Süddeutsche Zeitung, ZeitLeo, Maro Verlag and Ventil Verlag. Some of her comics have already been published in the form of zines in very small print runs. Katharina Kulenkampff is part of the artist collective SPRING and her comics regularly appear in the anthology of the same name published by Mairisch Verlag. She lives and works as a comic artist and illustrator in Berlin.