A hundred and forty humans, 39 trees, 32 planets and 26 factories.

This is what you will see in the myriad of cartoons on display at the “9th Kyoto International Cartoon Exhibition” held in Jakarta’s Bentara Budaya until Sunday.

More than 90 cartoonists from 33 countries designed close to 200 satirical drawings on the theme “what is the best way to develop our planet?”.

The first thing you’ll notice when walking through the exhibition is that the majority of cartoons do not answer the question. Most cartoonists dwell on the ill effects of global warming on our planet, as if they were unable to find answers, as if they were overwhelmed by the problem. And this is actually interesting, because it highlights how difficult it is for artists, like for scientists, to address the issue of climate change and find solutions.

So, most cartoons exhibited seem to ask another question: “What shall we save our planet from?”.

The works include images of factories, deforestation, animals in cage, melting icebergs and the human being at the center.

The theme of regression is also quite recurrent, with cartoonists depicting the relationship between humans and animals, human beings morphing into monkeys or a naked Adam and Eve living a grey and dirty planet. All of those works reflect a great awareness of environmental issues.

Are artists more concerned about the (also political) issue of global warming? The cartoonists running for this competition certainly are. Nevertheless, this exhibition proves that most people in the world, regardless of their nationality or age, know only too well about the main issues of global warming.

Cartoonists in this exhibition come from almost all four corners of the world (from Cuba to China passing by Serbia or Germany) and from different generations (the youngest participant is 17 years old while the oldest is turning 90 this year).

So if artists are representative of the inner thought of civil society, then it looks like the world is pretty aware of the climate change issue. And this is a first positive step toward a “better planet”.

The “Kyoto International Cartoon Exhibition” was held for the first time in 1991. Back then, participants were all from Europe and Russia.

Nowadays, many come from Asia and in particular Indonesia, which was well-represented in the exhibition’s ninth edition.

The aim of the Kyoto Cartoon committee, which doesn’t depend on the Kyoto Protocol but supports its actions, is simply to keep spreading the environmental message among civil society.

As international negotiations on climate change are on the verge of deciding the future of the Kyoto protocol, this kind of initiative seems more than welcome.

But while the idea behind the exhibition is noble, it is unfortunate the Kyoto Cartoon committee does not fully exploit it.

Indeed, only few people will be able to see these cartoons since the exhibition will only travel to one more place, Bali, in October, before heading back to Kyoto.

Furthermore, there are no plans to distribute and sell a compendium of cartoons across bookshops, nor to gather the works on a website, which today, is the best way to convey an idea at a world level.

So far, the little-publicized competition has attracted few visitors. Without counting the 137 guests who attended the grand opening last Thursday, a little less than 200 people, mostly journalists and students from design schools, have visited the exhibition.

And it is all the more a shame since many of the competitors are famous cartoonists who work for large newspapers and magazines. Martin Honeysett for instance, who won the special price, works for The Sunday Telegraph and The Observer. Most of the competitors, including this year’s winner, Indonesian Jitet Koestana and Pawel Kuczynski, who came second, have also participated and won prizes in other politically themed cartoon contests.

Interestingly there are no artists from the US which refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol. M. Sudarta, the Indonesian member of the Kyoto Committee, told The Jakarta Post that they “highly encourage people from all over the world to participate in the competition, but unfortunately no American submitted their work until now”.

It is regretful the committee of the Kyoto International Cartoon Exhibition did not choose to hold the exhibition in the US rather than just Southeast Asia.

It would have delivered a stronger political message, rather than just preaching to the choir.

Until Sept. 5, 2010
From 10 a.m. — 6 p.m.
Bentara Budaya Jakarta,
Jl. Palmerah Selatan 17
Jakarta

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