The Hindu has news of plans by the Indian Institute of Cartoonists to open a cartoon gallery on Mahatma Ghandi Road in Bangalore in fifteen days time, with plans to look for a permanent gallery space at the exotic-sounding and enchantingly-named location of the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor, with the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise Limited (NICE) due to provide space within the proposed 300-acre film city site.
(taken from Mario de Miranda’s gallery at Cartoonists India)
According to the Hinud article NICE’s chariman Ashok Kheny also launched the website Cartoonists India, which will feature the work of a number of Indian illustrators current and past such as Mario Miranda and Rama Murthy, as well as explaining cartoon history in India. Plans are also being proposed for annual cartooning awards, a monthly magazine (in English) and a library, so it is pretty ambitious, with one cartoonist, V.G. Narendra saying it was all part of a plan to make Bangalore the ‘cartoon capital’ of the country.
(from C.H. Venkatesh’s gallery on the site)
Obviously I’m in favour of any venture that is going to increase the visibility and public awareness of the cartooning arts, but one of the aspects I especially enjoyed in browsing the site’s galleries is that, not for the first time, I’m reminded how almost universal the cartooning language can be. Of course there are some here which rely on a knowledge of current events in India and those will more than likely go right past me, just as a political cartoon about Scotland’s First Minister would mean little to someone in Delhi or Alaska, but the majority of those I’ve had time to enjoy will make sense to almost anyone. And again I am reminded of how a well-crafted cartoon can be an amazing example of compact communication, squeezing a number of concepts and events into a single frame and communicating that to a wide audience, often more effectively than a page of prose. Take a look at this cartoon (below), “Miss India” by Syam Mohan for example, summarising the enormous disparities in India as parts of society push successfully forward with successful software companies and glamorous Bollywood stars while at the same time huge numbers live in appaling conditions which haven’t changed in centuries. A century ago this cartoon may have shown the same Indian woman in the mirror, struggling under her burden but with a colonial memsahib in her imperial finery where the beauty queen now stands; one player changes but the song remains the same.
March 11th, 2008 at 4:42 am
Kindly visit
http://www.kaakdrishti.com
http://www.kaaktoons.com
for daily cartoons of
Kaak : Cartoonist of Masses
January 30th, 2009 at 6:47 am
Excellent,
Pl. publish more and more Cartoons of Khenis & other involved BMIC project.