About the Exhibition
As a cartoonist being asked to exhibit your work is like receiving a death threat. Trust me, I have tried both.
As most of my cartoonist friends and colleagues, I am - to some degree - an introvert. In a way we hold out a piece of paper between ourselves and the world - showing our work, but not ourselves.
I have often described it like being a stand-up comedian, performing on a stage - addressing a dark and empty theater. In the moment, we cannot see or hear our audience and their reactions - if any.
So we must rely on our own process, and in a sense draw for ourselves.
And in a sense it is the process itself that is the prize:
Finding the essence of the subject, sketching, thinking and combining different paradigms, is superbly gratifying.
I draw cartoons not with the intention to voice my own opinion, but rather to ask a question - to investigate. To try to understand the issue at hand: Politics, conflicts, injustice, misuse of power, violation of human rights or simply everyday life. To see how it resonates with me - as it hopefully will for my audience.
This is a truly visual process. Almost always I need to have my pencil in hand to get ideas. I don’t know how it works, but I imagine that I use alternating and sometimes very remote parts of my brain in the process. I have later learned, that many of my colleagues experience the exactly same.
I have chosen to show 100 pieces of work from roughly the last ten years, covering most of the threats mankind is currently faced with. Most of these include ourselves.
Niels Bo Bojesen