Cartoonists Who Are Women

From the "dscriber" website

05 November 2011

Please follow the link for complete profiles of the cartoonists.
Every year, the entire population of a small village in France orchestrates a festival dedicated to the art of cartooning. Celebrating its thirtieth year, the St. Just-le-Martel Salon International du dessin de presse et d'humour is a showcase for numerous exhibits of cartoons from around the world, and brings together hundreds of international cartoonists on two weekends in October. The exhibits range from historical overviews of the art form to individual tributes of famous living cartoonists.


I had the pleasure of curating one of the exhibits this year. The organizing theme of my exhibit is international cartoonists who are women. There aren’t many women in the business of cartooning, but more and more are emerging. The voices of women cartoonists are varied; however my exhibit’s focus was primarily political. The subject of women’s rights of course is not only the domain of women artists, but what they do bring to the subject is unique to their gender. Only women know what it is like to be a woman, and their work at times illustrates that. With this exhibit, my intention was to bring the artists’ work into view, and to show the strength of women’s voices from all over the world, as well as to demonstrate the power of cartoons. The artists are: Firoozah Mozafarri, Iran: Hana Hajjar, Saudi Arabia; Piyale Madra, Turkey; Rasha Mahdi, Egypt; Catherine Beaunez, France; Toshiko Nishida, Japan; Xia Lichuan, China; Caro, Switzerland; Cathy Wilcox, Australia; Marlene Pohl, Germany: Ana Von Rebeur, Argentina; Cintia Bolio, Mexico; Ann Telnaes and myself, Liza Donnelly, United States.