80 toons to enthrall Bengalureans on June 1

Imagery so powerful, stark and arresting that any caption turns out of place. This is cartooning at its illustrative best, clinical satire at its peak. And this is exactly what distinguishes the best of 80 international cartoons lined up for an exhibition here for 22 days from June 1.

Sample this: A gutter-mouth’s speech filtered through a commode held out as a loudspeaker takes one cartoon to another level. It gets its international tag for a reason: Demagoguery knows no national boundary.

On June 1, as the show kicks off at the Indian Cartoon Gallery off Trinity Circle, M G Road, cartooning as a medium is bound to elevate itself through an overpowering mix of dissent, satire, graphic art and engaging humour.

The cartoons are culled out from a record 122 entries received for the 11th International Maya Kamath Memorial Awards Competiton for Best Foreign Cartoons 2018, organised by the Indian Institute of Cartoonists based here.

Sixteen Iranian and 14 Chinese cartoons dominate the spread. But Turkish and Indonesian cartoonists also have a strong representation. Unique works from Ukraine, Poland, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, Serbia, United Kingdom, Germany and Morocco complete a truly international mix of styles, tastes and visual critiques.

Art often transforms beyond mundane two-dimensional limits through juxtapositions of extremes. When a cartoonist adopts this to animate hyperbole, a cartoon’s dramatic value peaks. On the periphery of a vast, endless desert, the Pacific Ocean is reduced to a drop of water. This work is a telling comment on the change, climatic and otherwise.

The jury has been unanimous in its verdict: These selected works have a freshness, packing a punch with fresh ideas, combining messaging with a high degree of craftsmanship. Noted playwright and actor Girish Karnad, renowned sculptor Balan Nambiar, veteran cartoonist B G Gujjarappa and writer Vivek Shanbhag complete the jury.