#arabcomics

Yesterday morning, my mum teased me by asking for a definition of comic art and what makes it different from a caricature in 5 minutes or less. Luckily enough, I had just gone through Eisner and had forgotten about McCloud, so the answer was fast enough: “Comic art is a form of Sequential Art, a caricature cartoon, not.” 5 sec. World record (for me).

She’d come up with that question after I’d been reading about comics and, more precisely, about Arab comics in the last six months or so, since that’s the topic I wish to talk about on my final paper before graduating in… Yes, you guessed well, 40 days.

Anyway, in the evening I was just ready to write down from the notes of the different bibliography I had just checked during the last months, also McCloud, when I realized I had a document with dozens of links that I hadn’t yet checked. Half of it was in Arabic, and some of it written by artists and scholars that now I know are quite somebody and can’t be ignored.

So, just another challenge before this adventure ends. Today, I was just ready to get this through when I found out that one of the scholars I was following was also a cartoon artist I had an eye on and was on Tumblr. Then, I found another one on Instagram who was posting a picture every day related to the new words he was learning in Dutch. 

Automatically I decided I’d just copy them. And here I find myself. Today, among other things I just learnt that “comic strip” in Arabic is “شرائط” (strip, ribbon) + “مصورة” (image, photograph). Strip imaged. Literally. 

Also, it turns out that the International Festival of comics in Angouleme needed 43 editions to award a woman. Meanwhile, in the roughly ten-twelve years during which the Arab comic has developed, always about half the artists in the main publication (and prized in the main awards) were women. 

Tulip Hazbar is a Syrian artist, born in Aleppo and raised in the UAE, she is currently based out of Sharjah where she works as a designer and illustrator. She posts her work and collections of miscellanea on her instagram @tuliphazbar, which is a work of art in and of itself. Her bio on Tashkeel states: “Hazbar’s work stems from the process of collecting tangible and intangible miscellanea. Her practice revolves around reconstructing memories and the ritual of collecting. She attempts to find answers to questions on value, transience and permanence through looking at social interactions, music and found objects.”