Le Immagini della Fantasia 44

Dinara Mirtalipova’s story begins in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, during the Soviet era. She spent her childhood there and studied computer science in college. After the country gained independence in 1991, she moved with her family to the United States. Today she lives in Cleveland, Ohio, but her memories are still filled with images of her homeland.

Her early visual repertoire took shape in her grandmother’s home, amid decorations, fabrics, rugs, fairy tales, and fantastical creatures from Central Asia. Dinara absorbed this culture even before she began to study it, and over time, she wove it together with diverse experiences and artistic languages.

It is this intersection of childhood memories, folk tradition, and a contemporary perspective that the exhibition invites visitors to explore. The approximately fifty works on display—illustrations from children’s books and unpublished editorial projects, studies, sketchbooks, and personal works—allow viewers to trace the evolution of an ever-evolving creative process.

The more than two hundred illustrations on display offer a collective response, portraying courage as a journey that traverses fear, leads to self-discovery, and is fulfilled through encounters with others.

Through Fear

Fear is courage’s first traveling companion. To move through it means to acknowledge it and, at times, to draw closer to what frightens us. It can take the form of a gigantic animal, a transparent cage, or a distance that seems impossible to bridge; it can also hide behind reassuring words and silences that no one hears.

Images help us see what words do not say. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the choice to move forward in spite of it.

Self-Discovery

Recognizing fear allows us to turn our gaze inward. Discovering who we are does not mean finding a ready-made identity, but accepting that we are in a state of transformation. Like a seed, we grow through care and relationships.

Creativity and imagination help us overcome prejudices, challenge ourselves, and observe the world from new perspectives. Courage can be an act of rebellion, the desire to fly, the freedom to escape a fate decided by others. It also lives in everyday life, when we care for someone.

Small Revolutions

Beyond fear, through self-discovery, the journey leads toward others. Here, everything comes together in one word: us. Courage transcends the individual realm and becomes action, connection, and change.

Revolutions can arise from everyday achievements, from a desire for autonomy, or from the choice to pursue a passion. They can change the way we live and imagine space, open up paths once considered inaccessible, and give a voice back to forgotten stories. In the transition from “I” to “we,” courage becomes emancipation and solidarity—trust in the ability of children to change the world.

In 1983, when Štěpán Zavřel decided to organize the first illustration exhibition in Sarmede, he chose the cover of the picture book “Il ponte dei bambini,” written by Max Bolliger and illustrated by Zavřel himself, which was first published in Italian in 1977 in Zurich by Bohem Press with the support of the Proloco of the Municipality of Sarmede and the Province of Treviso.

Twenty years after the book’s publication, in 1997, he painted that same bridge on the facade of a building, which can still be seen today from the small window of the Casa della Fantasia.

Fifty years after the first edition, we’ve chosen to revisit that story because it continues to hold an image that speaks to us: that of a bridge that makes encounters possible.

Perhaps this is also why the picture book has embraced such diverse linguistic and cultural realities: published in German in 1979 by Bohem Press, it was later translated into English, French, Japanese, Spanish, Afrikaans, Dutch, Swedish, Frisian, Sardinian, Slovenian, Ladin, and five varieties of the Friulian dialect.

A story that began on two shores thus ended up crossing many others, finding a new language each time in which to tell the story of the possibility of encounter.

The works featured in this section were created by the illustrators of the International School of Illustration during the summer workshops. Each participant was asked to create an illustration on the theme of the exhibition, based on the prompt provided by their workshop.

The two sessions, led by Jesús Cisneros and Joanna Concejo, explored different yet complementary forms of courage: trust in one’s intuition, which allows one to recognize and follow one’s inner voice, and the willingness to open up to others, even revealing one’s doubts and vulnerabilities.