Winners of 'cartoon Oscars' scoop awards at ceremony
ISTANBUL
The winners of the 31st Aydın Doğan International Cartoon Contest were presented with their awards at a ceremony held on Sept. 29 at the Trump Shopping Mall Culture and Show Center.This year, Turkish cartoonist Kürşat Zaman won first prize. The second prize of the contest went to Iranian artist Mojtaba Heidarpanah and third prize went to Polish Krzysztof Grzondziel, who was also last year’s winner.
Also at the ceremony, Iranian cartoonist Alireza Pakdel, who drew a cartoon of Doğan Holding Honorary Chairman Aydın Doğan due to his contributions to the “improvement of the art of cartooning,” presented the cartoon to the Hürriyet Chair and Aydın Doğan Foundation Deputy Chair Vuslat Doğan Sabancı.
Turkish cartoonist Kürşat Zaman won first prize.
Speaking before the award ceremony, the Aydın Doğan Foundation Executive Board Chair Candan Fetvacı said the cartoon contest had a special place in the foundation’s education-based works, adding, “As an inseparable part of media, cartoons are a fast way of communication that make us approach events in a different way and express our views freely. Drawing is at the same time the safety valve for young people. As a platform that makes the voice of all cartoonists heard, we both support cartoon artists and enable their voice to be heard in a more effective way. Our hope is to raise awareness against violence and primitiveness.”
She said that in the 30th year, they had added a new dimension to their works in the field of cartooning. “We have begun working with the Creative Children’s Association. We organize competitions and education for children. They also bring together cartoonists who join the contest and jury members,” she said.
Following the speech, the awards of the first three winners, Zaman, Heidarpanah and Grzondziel, were presented by Sabancı.
Zaman said he had been entering the contest since 2003, and continued: “It is a contest that we attach great importance to, because it gathers the views of all cartoonists in the world in an album. I am very happy to be the winner; it was an award that I hoped for. I previously held places in the Aydın Doğan Cartoon Contest, but I won first prize for the first time this year.”
The winners of the Success Awards, Arslan, Akın Candemir, Menekşe Çam, Burak Ergin (Turkey), Rafael Correa, Rodrigo Machado da Rosa (Brazil), Pawel Kuczynski (Poland), Peter Nieuwendijk (Holland), Alireza Pakdel, Farzaneh Vaziritabar, Sajad Rafeei (Iran) and Zhang Wein (China) received their awards from Doğan Holding Executive Board Chairman Yahya Üzdiyen and Fetvacı.
This year, a total of 814 cartoonists from 70 countries joined the competition with 2,556 pieces this year. The international committee, which gathered in Bodrum, evaluated 300 cartoons by 214 artists from 43 countries, which were previously chosen by the pre-selection committee.
The selection committee was headed by Liza Donnelly, who is an award-winning cartoonist and writer for the New Yorker Magazine and Forbes. The jury also consisted of famous figures: Ercan Akyol, Latif Demirci, Selçuk Demirel, Piyale Madra and Tan Oral from Turkey; Dokhshid Ghodratipour from Iran; Moacir Knorr Gutterres from Brazil; Catherine Meurisse from France; Lichuan Xia from China and Anita O’Brien from England, who is the director of the London Cartoon Museum.
