In 1999, Ivana Filipović/Ivana Filipovich/Ивана Филиповић, an architect, archaeologist, designer, cartoonist, and occasional procrastinator, became a literal escape artist, selling her beloved black lacquer piano for a one-way ticket to Vancouver.
After a 20-year hiatus, during which she worked in educational media and communications at a Canadian university, she returned to cartooning. In the last few years, her comics were published in Sweden, Slovenia, and Serbia and were exhibited at the French Institute (L’Institut français) galleries in Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia, and at the NOVA comic arts festival in Serbia.
Deeply interested in psychology, her work aims predominantly to portray complex female characters and other underrepresented persons and groups. Mainly focused on slice-of-life stories, she occasionally ventures into other genres. Stylistically close to French and Italian cartooning, she uses both traditional and digital tools. The Canada Council for the Arts has supported her exploration of 3D storyboarding.
Conundrum Press will publish her first graphic novel, What’s Fear Got To Do With It?, in the Fall of 2023. She won the 2023 Doug Wright Award for the best self-published/micro-press book in Canada for the collection of short literary comics Where Have You Been?, available on Amazon.
Read more about the 2023 Doug Wright Awards on CBC Books and about Ivana’s portraits of female artists on CBC Arts.
Articles, interviews and other mentions:
CBC: 20 Canadian Comics to Check Out in Fall 2023 (CBC Books)
CBC: What’s Fear Got to Do With It? by Ivana Filipovich (CBC Books)
Conundrum Press: 5 Questions with Ivana Filipovich (Andy Brown)
The Comics Journal: Chekhov in the Funny Papers (Bob Levin)
SOLRAD: “All These Stories Wanting to Come Out”: An Interview with Ivana Filipovich (Hagai Palevsky)