Friday, November 29, a monster burst out of the ground in Brussels, a giant octopus darting its tentacles towards the city's colossal courthouse. The appearance is all the more surprising because it is partly mechanical, since it is a hybrid creature, half octopus, half Nautilus submarine. This is a bronze statue inspired by the latest book by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters, “The Return of Captain Nemo”.
This 12-ton statue, 9.5 meters long and 6.5 meters high, is only passing through Place Poelart. It was actually commissioned by the mayor of Amiens, France, Jules Verne's hometown, to mark the 120th anniversary of the writer's death. It will be permanently installed there in March 2025. Its temporary installation in Brussels marks the occasion of an exhibition of the original drawings of “Return of Captain Nemo” in the neighboring Champaka gallery, until December 28.
If appearances linked to comics are not rare in the Belgian capital, which has dozens of frescoes of the most famous heroes, it is rarer to see Belgian characters on the walls of Havana. However, since November 11, Blake and Mortimer, with a drawing inspired by “The Yellow Mark”, are on a wall on Avénida de Belgica (Avenue of Belgium, anyway). It was painted by two Cuban artists to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the cultural agreement between the Cuban city and the Brussels-Capital Region.
