I was honored to have an exhibition of my political cartoons in Bangalore, India at the India Institute of Cartoonists.

It makes me very happy that my work was able to travel, it can speak as well  (if not better) as I can in person. Seeing my cartoons about women’s rights  be shown in different countries, as well as my cartoons about politics and life in the United States means a great deal to me. 

India has a long, fascinating history of political cartoonists, and I have read some about it in Caricaturing Culture in India, by Ritu Gairola. It is fascinating to me to see how different cultures approach cartooning, and how different countries find humor in their lives. A vital art form that often is a risky profession, in many countries cartoonists are jailed for creating satire about their governments.  

Cartoons can cross borders–in important ways, and in difficult ways– when words cannot. We have seen with the Danish Cartoon Controversy in 2006, and then the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris in 2015 that cartoons can be misunderstood and the result can be deadly.  A firm believer in total freedom of speech, nevertheless I am finding it a complicated line to walk. It is a line that requires trying to understand how one’s work might affect others, while drawing about issues that are important to you and you feel need to be expressed. I wrote about this in The New York Times following the death of cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo publication in 2015,  here.

Many thanks to the organizer, V.G. Narendria, and his colleagues at the India Institute of Cartoonists for giving me the honor of having my work cross the border into India, a country I find fascinating.