ARTISTIC RESEARCH

‘Comics for All: Drawing Intersectionality’. [Community-art based project. 2025.]

In this project, I explore how art education—particularly through comics—can help young people understand and challenge discrimination in their everyday school lives. Working with students aged 14 and 15, I developed and tested a curriculum designed to foster intercultural understanding and anti-discriminatory thinking through creative expression. Intersectional discrimination, shaped by race, gender, class, and other identities, deeply influences students’ experiences in school.  The project has since been placed in a public library, inviting visitors to engage with questions such as: Can schools and public libraries be spaces to open conversations about intersectionality? How can education through art create dialogic spaces that build community and intercultural understanding? In doing so, it reimagines art education as a shared, public practice—one that supports peace, solidarity, and intercultural respect, and that uses comics as a medium for dialogue and transformation.

Exhibition:

(2025). Comics for All. What does it mean to be human?
Trondheim Bibliotek. Trondheim, Norway, Sep 19 - Oct 10.

https://biblioteket.trondheim.kommune.no/arrangement

Publication:

Balzi, L. (2025). (Un)scripted tales of intersectional silences through comic zines at middle school. International Journal of Education Through Art, 21(2), 261–282. https://doi.org/10.1386/eta_00194_1

*collaboration with artist Bella da Silva Buxom