Under the title "The women of my life", the Kirchner Cultural Center in the Argentine capital presents the work and unpublished works of this successful designer who says she was inspired by the work of the Frenchwoman Claire Bretécher (1940-2020 ).

"I was 19 when I came across one of his comics + The Infernal Cord +. That's when I realized that was what I wanted to do," she told AFP. .

Published in twenty countries, the collections of its fifteen comic strips have sold more than a million copies worldwide.

"Tournantsdangerous", one of his most famous albums, was also released in France.

Today, at 60, freed from the demands of publishing contracts that took her up to 12 hours a day, Maitena Burundarena recognizes that her albums and caricatures published in the daily press have opened up a dialogue on the women, especially in Latin American countries "with their deep-seated machismo".

"My work has helped many women question things they felt but couldn't put into words," she says, because "humor is a way of saying things without be aggressive and not mean".

Women dissatisfied with their bodies, undermined by the difficulties of their couple, breastfeeding mothers, grandmothers sunbathing... Maitena's boards are essentially about women.

"The big difference in the humor that we women do is that we laugh at ourselves, we don't make fun of others. Humor relieves pain and suffering. Being able to laugh at what who made you suffer in a certain way does you good, it saves you”, she believes.

Argentinian designer Maitena at the Kirchner Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, November 9, 2022 Luis ROBAYO AFP

And, at the same time, it warns against the excesses of political correctness.

"The hyper-feminist humor of the current years does not make me laugh. It is a humor full of instructions. You cannot use the word patriarchy in a joke, it is not the vocabulary (of a joke) , it's not funny. It's a theoretical framework", she underlines, calling for "laugh a little more, not at each other, but at human misery".

"Powerful"

The exhibition reveals lesser known pages of his work, such as his first caricatures of the heroine of his album "Flo" who wonders why his father wants a son when he already has a daughter, or certain erotic drawings published in the 1980s in the magazine Sex Humor where she spoke about the desire of women.

First retrospective of Argentinian designer Maitena, in Buenos Aires on November 9, 2022 Luis ROBAYO AFP

A time when, she remembers, she only drew and did not dare to write.

"Women didn't have the power to do so many things. I felt powerful enough to draw eroticism, women who are turned on. It was already a lot in a newsroom where the humor was sexist , misogynist, homophobic, racist... and I made sexy women. It was a lot. But it was then difficult for me to give them a voice".

Now the mother of three children, two of whom she barely reached the age of majority, Maitena lives between the beaches of neighboring Uruguay and Buenos Aires where she finds her seven-year-old granddaughter.

Unpublished works and sketches by Argentinian designer Maitena, in Buenos Aires on November 9, 2022 Luis ROBAYO AFP

"I'm having a good time. I wouldn't want to be 20, 30 or 40. I've done everything I've loved in life, a lot of things have happened to me. I'm coming to a point where I yearns for more calm. I like to be in nature, to read, to write, to be with the people I love, to be a grandmother".

© 2022 AFP