De Lege Ruimte

Femme ter Haar received a grant to write De Lege Ruimte. In this experimental, hand-drawn graphic novel, four characters each struggle in their own way with life in the big city, and the emptiness of existence. A stranger arrives in a new country; a young woman is haunted by a dark shadow; a widower does not know how to cope with his loss; and an old woman begins to forget more and more. From a mix of image and text, the reader is poetically taken on their quest for where the dark ends and the light begins. In developing this project, Femme searches for a visual language for loneliness and loss. How do you translate these elusive emotions into a visual novel? By researching negative space and use of color and materials, she aims to push the boundaries of the graphic novel and create a book that surprises in both form and content.

Femme is an illustrator. Among other things, she creates visual stories, (children's) books, window drawings, animations and editorial illustrations. With her spherical, colorful images, she captures small moments and playful observations, as well as great feelings of transience and loneliness. Femme illustrated on commission for the New York Times, de Volkskrant and Noorderbreedte, among others. Her visual stories have been published in Flow Magazine and Aline and on Drawing the Times. In 2021, she was one of the winners of the Fiep Westendorp Incentive Prize, an award for emerging illustration talent.