La Nouvelle bande dessinée arabe
Arab artists were the stars of this year’s Festival international de la bande dessinée d'Angoulême, Europe’s premier comic con.
This coterie of artists has long gathered at festivals in Algiers, Beirut, or Cairo. But now, they were treated to a grand welcoming in Angoulême, the city of comics. (French speakers, see coverage in Le Monde or VICE of a landmark exhibition of new comic art from the Middle East.)
I contributed an essay to book that launched at Angoulême. Simply titled La Nouvelle bande-dessinée arabe, it is just that: a richly illustrated assortment of Arab alt-comix.
It includes knock-out strips from acclaimed zines Lab619, Samandal, Skef-Kef, and Tok Tok and drawings by Mazen Kerbaj, Rym Mokhtari, Lena Merhej, Joseph Kaï, Ganzeer, Andeel, Tawfig, Golo, Migo, Twins Cartoon, Othman Selmi, and many others.
From my essay:
“What were or are the golden ages for caricature in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East?” asks veteran American journalist Victor S. Navasky in his 2013 book, The Controversial Art: Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power. Here’s the thing: One needn’t venture very far to find the Middle East and North Africa’s comic renaissance. Just hop a flight to Cairo or Beirut or any Maghrebi capital, where over the past decade, a vanguard of Arab illustrators has come of age.
But for those who can’t spare the journey, the book is a rare tour of Arab comics in translation. The colorful format, a zine-like compendium of oodles of artists, brings out the best of the comics themselves.
From Algeria to Iraq, Jordan to Morocco, and everywhere in between, a new generation of comic artists is drawing upon this archive of graphic storytelling, caricature, and sequential art in the Arab world. That this book, the first collection to bring together a wide collection of Arab comics and translate them to French, would have the appearance of a zine—a mix and medley of voices that capture the cacophony of the quotidian and fantastical in the Middle East—is particularly apt. The most audacious Arab comics have first been published by independent collectives, launched at urban spaces, sold at art galleries and cafés, and devoured by young readers eager for the next edition.
What is also distinctive about Samandal and like-minded zines that have gained cult followings in Algeria, Egypt Iraq, Morocco, and Tunisia is that they are horizontal collectives motivated by art, not fame or profit. Another thread that connects many of these comics is an urban sensibility. This is also an impetus behind Egypt’s comic ‘zine Tok Tok, a collaborative publication that has published 14 issues since 2011. The diversity of images from a multitude of artists call on the reader to experience Cairo, to take a deep breath and look around, to sit in an open air ahwa (coffeehouse) and drink a tea and talk to people.
“I wanted to be in direct contact with the street,” says Tok Tok cofounder Mohamed Shennawy. In his narrative sequences, the reader can almost smell the megalopolis, a bustling city of noise and light pollution that is film never catches. The stories of Shennawy and his collaborators also capture the social inequalities and dynamics of a city in flux since the 2011 revolution. Tok Tok is a call to engage with its complicated history and to challenge censorship.
“Géographie”, Joseph Kaï. Samandal, Liban. 2015.
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Order La Nouvelle bande dessinée arabe here.