Facts &
Figures
Arab
Countries
15
Number of
Submitions
220
Female
Participation
26%
4th Mahmoud Kahil
Award Winners
March 2019
Editorial Cartoons
Mohamed Afefa | Palestine
Mohamed Afefa is a Palestinian cartoonist. He has worked at a number of newspapers, including the New Arab newspaper until the middle of 2016. He also publishes independently and is active in different visual arts mediums.
Graphic Novels
Twins Cartoon | Egypt
Twins Cartoon is the pseudonym of Egyptian artists Mohamed & Haitham Elseht, graduates of the Faculty of Fine Arts’ Animation Department in 2008. They are the founders of Kawkab El Rasameen, Garage Comics Magazine, and Co-founders of the Cairo Comix International Festival. They were chosen to represent Arabic comics as invited speakers at the Design Indaba Festival in South Africa, and their project was chosen from among 31 other projects from Africa that inspired Europe at the “What Design Can Do” Festival in the Netherlands. Read more
www.instagram.com/twinscartoon/
Comics
Kamal Zakour | Algeria
A graphic designer and illustrator, Kamal Zakour studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Algiers before spending a number of years working at advertising agencies and publishing houses. He trained in comics with Belgian author Etienne Schreder, which resulted in the collaborative book, “Monstres,” in 2011. Read more
www.instagram.com/kamalzakour/
Graphic Illustration
Sandra Ghosn | Lebanon
Sandra Ghosn was born in Lebanon in 1983. After receiving a master’s degree in Illustration and Comics from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (2004), she went on to pursue further studies at the National School of Decorative Arts in the Printed Image division (2007). Read more
https://www.instagram.com/sandra.ghosn/
Chilldren’s Book Illustration
Hani Saleh | Egypt
Hani Saleh is a children’s book illustrator and graphic designer who graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts. He has illustrated a number of children’s books and created several visual productions for children, and has also worked with different Arabic magazines and published a number of illustrated stories and various book covers, and produced animated cartoons. Read more
HELMI TOUNI
Hilmi El Touni is an Egyptian artist born in 1934. El-Touni worked out of Cairo and Beirut designing and illustrating for many different publishers and institutions in the Arab world. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Helwan University in Cairo in 1958, with a degree in interior design, and first began working with Dar el-Hilal and El-Kawakeb magazine. After graduation, he continued working with Dar el-Hilal, balancing his distinctive art practice with commissioned design briefs from a number of renowned periodicals and publishing houses. A gentle and consistently productive artist, he has worked quietly for over six decades, carving a position for himself as a pillar of Arab visual culture. El Touni‘s interests extend from drawing and painting, to caricatures, editorial cartoons and graphic design. Read more
SAMANDAL COMICS
Samandal Association is a volunteer-based NGO dedicated to the advancement of the art of comics. Founded in 2007, Samandal has published a variety of books and hosted a number of workshops and events at both the national and international levels. The collective favors the singular voice of the artist, graphic and narrative experiments, and research that questions language. Its publications are read in several languages, from right to left as from left to right, each time, with a new way of laying out translations. Today, alongside the annual collective publications, Samandal is planning to expand its publishing catalogue and publish graphic novels, author’s books and children’s comics. Read more
4th Mahmoud Kahil
Award 2019 Finalists
Anas Lakkis | Lebanon
Othman Selmi | Tunisia
Elia Tawil | Lebanon
Mohamad Kraytem | Lebanon
Mohamed Tawfik | Egypt
Joseph Kai | Lebanon
Hassan Manasrah | Jordan
Hazem Kamal | Egypt
Hassan Manasrah | Jordan
Taghrid Abdelal | Palestine
Meet the Jury
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Steve Bell
UK
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Mazen Kerbaj
Lebanon
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George Khoury
Lebanon
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Joan Baz
Lebanon
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Chedly Elkhamsa
Tunisia
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Simona Gabrielli
Italy
Steve Bell has been drawing political comic strips for a living since 1977 and is a proponent of the short form. He has written and drawn the If… strip in the Guardian since 1981, and has been drawing up to four larger format political cartoons a week for the same paper since 1990. His work is unashamedly comic, but many of his cartoons are quite deliberately not funny at all.
Born in London in 1951, he first studied art, later qualifying as a teacher before becoming a full-time cartoonist. His original strip Maggie’s Farm appeared in Time Out and City Limits magazines from 1979 through to 1987, and he produced regular cartoons in full color for the New Statesman from 1987 to 1999.His work has been published worldwide, with thirty books of his own, and has won many awards, most notably the Political Cartoon of the Year in 2001, 2008 and 2013, the British Press AwardsCartoonist of the Year in 2002, the Political Cartoon Society’s Cartoonist of the Year award twice, and the Cartoon Arts TrustAward ten times.
Mazen Kerbaj is a Lebanese comics artist, visual artist and musician born in Beirut in 1975.
Kerbaj has authored over 15 books, and many of his short stories and drawings have been published in local and international anthologies, newspapers and magazines. His work has been translated into more than ten languages and has been shown in galleries, museums and art fairs around the globe.
Mazen Kerbaj is widely considered as one of the initiators and key players of the Lebanese free improvisation and experimental music scene. He is the co-founder of Irtijal, an annual improvisational music festival, and of Al Maslakh, the first label for experimental music in the region. As a trumpet player, Kerbaj pushes the boundaries of the instrument and continues to develop a personal sound and an innovative language.
www.kerbaj.com
George Khoury is a renowned Lebanese comics artist and critic. He has published several comic albums (graphic novels) and series in daily newspapers since the 1980s and received several awards. He authored several articles and essays on the history of comics in the Arab world, and continues to write critically on comics from the region. He has been head of the Animation Department at Future Television since its launch in 1993, and teaches at the Lebanese American University in Beirut.
Joan Baz is a Lebanese graphic designer and artist based in Beirut. Mainly focused on illustration, printmaking and animation, Joan’s work explores oral history, social practices, transmission and memory. Her recent project CD-R is an investigative audio platform, probing topics such as memory, displacement, and the built environment through voice notes, interviews, collected and produced sounds. She has a master’s degree from the French animation school, Supinfocom, and worked with several studios in Paris, London, Zagreb and Barcelona before returning to Beirut in 2012. Baz is an adjunct faculty at the Lebanese American University and is co-director of the Beirut Animated Festival. In 2015 she founded “Cardamon House,” a design, animation and illustration studio with work spanning across different media and formats. Her illustration work has been published in The Guardian, The Outpost, Brownbook, MIT Technology, The Carton and Majallet Onboz magazines, and her short films “Fouad” and “Dajeej” have screened at festivals worldwide.
https://www.joanbaz.com/
Chedly Elkhamsa is a renowned Tunisian editorial cartoonist and an art educator at the Tunis School of Fine Arts, with diverse experience in management, cinema, television and publishing. Elkhamsa’s work has been featured in journals, on covers and posters, in films, cartoons and awareness campaigns for various issues such as Women, Environment, Health, Heritage, etc. His work has been exhibited both locally across the Tunisian Republic, and internationally in Algeria, Morocco, England, France, Canada, Switzerland and Turkey.Elkhamsa has won numerous awards, including the Association of Tunisian Journalists Caricature Award in 1983, the International Festival of Caricature and Arab Cartoon Algeria Comics and Caricature award in 1987, the Children’s Theater Festival of Gabès Scenography Award for the play Le Puit in 2006, the University of Manouba Academia Press Freedom Award/free press award in 2013, and the Tunisian League of Citizenship Award in 2013.