An exhibition entitled “Faces and Features: Caricatures of Indian and Egyptian personalities”, organised by the Egyptian Caricature Society, is currently on display at the Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture (MACIC). The exhibition is a depiction of prominent Indian figures from the field of politics, art and literature, as well as cinema. The Indian personalities are shown alongside leading Egyptians in similar fields. Indian personalities that are depicted include Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai while Egyptians include Naguib Mahfouz, Youssef Chahine, and Omar Sharif. The exhibition was jointly inaugurated by the First Undersecretary in the Ministry of Culture Camelia Sobhi, the Ambassador of India to Egypt, Navdeep Suri and Ahmed Toghan, the pioneering caricaturist and the President of the Caricature Society, whose work is also shown in the exhibition. The style of the portraits is characterized by its simplicity; the lines express brilliantly the features of the particular character in question with the addition of some exaggeration in the facial appearance while the palette of colours is rather limited without many hues as exemplified in the caricatures of late Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz and ravishing Indian actress Aishwarya Rai. The Egyptian Caricature Society has worked closely with the Maulana Azad Centre recently with an exhibition of caricatures of Gandhi being inaugurated on 2 October to mark the International Day of Non-Violence and the 144th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. Both India and Egypt have a rich history of caricatures and cartoons, and the exhibition is the first of a series of steps to deepen the cooperation in the field of caricature art between India and Egypt. The portraits in the pictures depict Naguib Mahfouz and Aishwarya Rai. The exhibition runs through 14 November.
