Dragana Radanović

Dragana Radanović is a Serbian comics artist, researcher, and lecturer based in Belgium. Born in Yugoslavia shortly before its dissolution, she grew up in a place whose borders changed several times without her ever leaving home. From birth to adulthood, she lived in four different countries while remaining in the same hometown. It is a peculiar kind of migration: belonging to a generation that travelled without moving, born in one country and raised in several. Nearly a decade ago, she moved to Belgium, adding another layer to a life shaped by shifting histories and ideas of belonging.

Perhaps this is why she is drawn to stories that ask difficult questions. Through comics and visual storytelling, she explores themes such as childhood, memory, war, migration, and the ways individual lives become entangled with larger social and political histories. She enjoys drawing as a way of illustrating ideas, but even more as a way of thinking through them. It is also an activity that regularly results in strange facial expressions and a complete loss of awareness of time.

Dragana completed a PhD in the Arts exploring how childhood during times of war can be approached through drawing and visual narrative. The resulting graphic novel, What Should We Tell Them?, will be published by Ça et Là later this year. During the early stages of the project, a residency at the Maison des Auteurs in Angoulême provided the time and space for the story to take shape.

Today, she is a researcher at KU Leuven, a lecturer at LUCA School of Arts, and a co-founder of Comic-Aunties (Stripotetke), an initiative supporting less visible comic artists in Serbia. When she draws, the world disappears for a while. She thinks that’s nice.