Cartoonist Portrait of the Year

Zunar, August 3, 2015.

Zunar can blow on his smoking gun to mark a job damn well done.

Zunar - his mission is written all over his body:
"I will keep drawing until the last drop of my ink".

In truth, the cartoon above is three years old. Cartoonists do not waste time drawing themselves once their mission is accomplished. The one above was a distillation of his hitherto most important self-portrait, the one to the right of here.

This too is not so much of his person as of his mission. It was a catalog of the number of charges with no basis in the constitution, formulated to lock up those critical of the Malaysian government. Yet, Zunar kept drawing and the cartoon is a cartoon on his compositional technique: Placing the protagonist as the main object on the picture frame, while painting with the only bodily movement left to him. She being drawn is the wife of the then prime minister and co- if not the major player in their corruption scheme.

She may be a composition on his paper, but he is drawing the truth of her being, seeing as we all do Rosmah Mansor yelling at the bottom plane: Charge him!

His weapon of choice proved to be one of sharp precision and in defining his mission, the words are reason and necessity; an informed voice, reasoning every detail in composing his cartoons. He cut to the core of the matter. That is how we define art: and the core of great art we call love.

All the more so for having a greater goal than the person of the former prime minister. Najib has now lost all relevance. He is on track to his final expiration date:

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The cartoons shown are courtesy of Zunar: PLEASE SHARE