Barrack Rima: Drawing Identity, Defying Borders

Born in Tripoli, Lebanon, in 1972, Barrack Rima has lived in Brussels for the past thirty years. She is a comic strip author, filmmaker and former member of the Beirut-based comic strip association Samandal.

"My journey has been made in small steps, along winding paths, with hesitations and suffering, as well as passion and pleasure. Through comings and goings, twists and turns, surprises, violent storms, backtracking, doors opening and sometimes leaps… I was born in Tripoli, Lebanon, in 1972. Relatively untouched by war, my childhood was peaceful. In my teenage years, I didn’t have the space to recognize and express my gender identity. I closed myself off and took refuge in Art. I moved to Brussels in 1991 to study Comics. The shame of my repressed identity lasted a long time and was very difficult to shake off. But Comics allowed me to blossom in spite of everything, and for that, it saved me. Then, when the monster exploded violently and splattered all around me, I realized that I could no longer lie to myself, and I started therapy to heal and free myself. For a while I thought I was a homosexual man, then I fell in love with a woman with whom I lived for 15 years and had a child – one of life’s greatest gifts. Today, I’ve finally opened the door I was forbidden to open as a child: the door to transness.The paths of desire, love and gender identity have crossed those of poetry and politics. They have connected the visible to the invisible and opened the doors to mysticism."
"I was on a 6 weeks tour in North America to promote the English edition of my book ‘Beyrouth la trilogie’ / ‘Beirut’ (Alibata, 2017 / Invisible publishing 2024). And I am working on my new graphic novel ‘The Circle’. It’s a story in which I try to invent mythology, from a feminist and anarchist angle. It’s about rebelling against patriarchy and oppression in an afterlife so identical to life on Earth."

"Being a part of the Brussels queer community is like having a family. It gives me a feeling of support and security. But, as much as any family it can be suffocating. Queerness has no meaning for me if isolated from other facets of life and struggles. We are relatively safe here, but queer people are oppressed in the major part of the world. Today we are witnessing an ongoing genocide in Gaza and other mass killings in Lebanon, Sudan, Congo and elsewhere. All struggles should be connected because all oppressions are. No one is free until everyone is free.”