Women Cartoonists Award exhibition, EWK-Museum, Sweden Summer 2020

Few of the political cartoonists in the world are women or non-binary persons.
With sharp elbows and even sharper pens, they have created a room of their own.
To break patriarchal and non-inclusive structures within the cartooning community,
United Sketches and its founder Kianoush Ramezani decided to arrange
the first international award solely for women and non-binary cartoonists.
Themes for the artworks were two: Climate Change and Equality which resulted in
more than 1000 contributions by a total of 260 international cartoonists.

100 cartoons by 56 cartoonists made the cut and are now displayed in the exhibition;
With the pen through the glass ceiling – Women Cartoonists International Award.
This exhibition brings their work not only to a new audience in the world
but to the attention of editors and publishers who have the opportunity
to make space for a more diverse range of creative perspectives.
With this many contributions its evident that women and non-binary
cartoonists need more platforms to reach out.

United Sketches would like to thank Karin Sunvisson, one of the finalists of the award, who suggested the idea of this exhibition and and Carina Milde, intendent at the EWK Museum, who made it possible. We share Karin’s quote on the exhibition With the pen through the glass ceiling – Women Cartoonists International Award:

“Editors and publishers today seem to agree that satire is vital to the democratic society. It is said that the cartoonist should freely criticize power and that satire is a litmus test of our freedom of expression. But what does it say about our freedom of expression when only a fraction of the satirical images seen in public space are drawn by women?

There is a hierarchy that can be difficult for an outsider to spot: female illustrators are called to decorate, whereas male are called to comment. I want this exhibition to be perceived as a challenge to publishers and editors who, by lack of interest or imagination, maintain this order.

By participating in the Women Cartoonists International Award competition, these female satirists also call out to themselves and each other: Break the glass ceiling! Half the sky is ours!”

click here for more information: www.arbetetsmuseum.se/utstallning/med-pennan-genom-glastaket/