Aydın Doğan Foundation honors winning cartoonists
The 33rd Aydın Doğan International Cartoon Contest held a ceremony on Nov 22 to present awards to winners. This year’s winner was Italian cartoonist Marco De Angelis
This year, 752 artists from 68 countries joined the contest with 2,521 cartoons. The winner was Italian cartoonist Marco De Angelis’ cartoon depicting a refugee boat on a quilt that was causing Europeans to lose their sleep.
De Angelis said he was proud of winning the award. “I hope that my cartoon will make things easier to think on dramatic and important problems.”
Brazil’s Claudio Antonio Gomes was second in the contest for his depiction of refugees, while Turkish cartoonist Doğan Arslan placed third for his cartoon depicting a necktie resembling a sword with a drop of blood.
“My cartoon is not comic but too tragic. I believe that there will be another world without wars, violence and poverty; the world will change one day,” Gomes said.
“I tried to explain the current situation of male-dominant power and civilization, with humorous and graphical forms. Sometimes, you try to explain it with long articles. Here, I explained it through the similarity of necktie and the sword to make it stronger,” Arslan said.
For the first time this year, the Aydın Doğan Foundation, which aims to focus on women’s issues in the 21st century, also presented a special award under the title “strong girls, a strong world” to Turkish cartoonist Emrah Arıkan.
The committee also presented the success award to Oktay Bingöl, Kürşat Zaman and Hicabi Demirci (Turkey), Vitaly Bondar (Belarus), Evzen David (Czech Republic), “Feggo” Felipe Galindo (U.S.), Rodrigo Machado da Rosa and Raimundo Rucke Santos Souza (Brazil), Arif Sutristanto (Indonesia), Jugoslav Vlahovic (Serbia), Nahid Zamani (Iran) and Zygmunt Zaradkiewicz (Poland).
At the opening of the award ceremony, Hanzade Doğan Boyner, president of the Aydın Doğan Foundation, said: “Cartoon is a very special form of art. It sometimes makes us see ordinary events, sometimes sociological changes affecting life and sometimes disasters that hurt us, through a window opened by a cartoonist. Actually, cartoonists do not only draw current events and lifestyles but they contribute to cultural values and shape the history of mankind.”
Women-dominated jury
The selection committee of the contest is made up of 11 artists who are considered to be the authority of cartoons in Turkey and the world.
Among the jury members, seven are women.
Headed by Marlene Pohle from Argentina, the selection committee members included Ercan Akyol, Gülse Birsel, Latif Demirci, Piyale Madra, Tan Oral and Selçuk Demirel from Turkey, Assunta Toti Buratti from Italy, Yalda Hasheminezhad from Iran, Anita Kunz from Canada and Elena Ospina from Columbia.
Before the award ceremony, various workshops were organized and participated by young cartoonists during the New Drawings, New Drawers Cartoon and Humor Festival, organized for the first time this year.
In the festival venue, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts Faculty and the fine arts and design department students from Işık, Doğuş, Okan, Kemerburgaz and Dumlupınar universities were displayed for visitors.
The winning cartoons are currently on display at the Kadıköy Municipality Caddebostan Culture Center until Dec. 8.
As part of the exhibition, young cartoonists will come together in workshops with award-winning cartoonists.