The 6th Normandy for Peace World Forum will be held on 28 and 29 September in Caen (France) under the theme “Resistance! Bring peace back to the people”.
As part of this event, Cartooning for Peace is taking part in the Agora Ouest-France on 29 September with a meeting entitled “Saying without words” with Jam (Iran) and Nime (Algeria). The two cartoonists, who have been forced into exile, will give their personal accounts, share their experiences as threatened cartoonists, draw live…
Ukrainian journalist Roman Sushchenko is also on hand to give his account. Detained for a time in Russia, he took up cartooning in prison. Around twenty of his cartoons are on display in the Agora Ouest-France.
Several school classes from the Normandy region are present, giving young people the chance to meet the cartoonists and hear their stories.
Ali Jamshidifar, known as Jam, is a French cartoonist from Iran who has been living in Paris since 2015. He is a graduate of the Tehran School of Fine Arts, where, motivated by his militant spirit, he ran political magazines. He then worked for several press titles in Iran and was artistic director of Iran’s largest publishing house. In 2014 he was forced to stop working and leave Iran. He experienced great difficulties, living on the streets of Paris, before obtaining refugee status, meeting MSF, MDJ and then Plantu. Since 2016, he has been drawing again, has joined several networks of cartoonists and continues to campaign.
Born in Oran, Algeria, Nime, whose real name is Amine Benabdelhamid, is an illustrator, cartoonist and comic strip author. A graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in sculpture, he soon turned to drawing, which enabled him to work in Algeria with the newspaper El Watan. He then took up an artistic residency at the Cité Internationale de la Bande dessinée in Angoulême, before setting up his own agency, Créature, specialising in graphic communications, on his return to Algeria. In 2019, during the “Hirak”, his illustrations critical of the Algerian authorities led to his arrest, conviction and imprisonment for a year. Released in January 2020, he was awarded the “Couilles au cul” prize at the Angoulême Festival in 2020, in recognition of his artistic courage. A year and a half later, he announced his exile in France. Today, Nime has released his first comic book entitled “Anecdotes” and is involved in numerous artistic projects and workshops on comics, press cartoons and freedom of expression.
For this partnership, Ouest-France gave a tribune to Kak, President of Cartooning for Peace : “Press cartoons: censorship is becoming dominant in the world” (in French).
Cartoon from Jam (Iran) – “What can’t be said can be drawn”
