An upcoming exhibition by Egyptian caricaturist Tamer Youssef, who now resides in California, is gathering attention, reports Rania Khallaf An Egyptian cartoonist will receive top billing when his Cartoon Solo Exhibition "Le Monde de Caricature de Tamer Youssef 2" opens at the Alliance Française of San Francisco in California on 31 January. The show will run until 13 February. "This is my second Solo Exhibition in San Francisco," Youssef told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Around 75 of my newest artworks of political caricatures created in 2008 will be exhibited. It'll be a great chance to remember the most important events of 2008, and I believe the American presidential election was the top news story of 2008 and will stay in memory for the coming years, which is why you'll find portraits of Obama, McCain and Hillary Clinton in my exhibition." The election was the theme that spawned the first event: "Le Monde de Caricature de Tamer Youssef" -- Solo Cartoon Exhibition at the Alliance Française of San Francisco in April 2008. "I always work on a theme and I keep refining this theme year after year. For example, in Egypt I worked on 'Tamer Youssef's Political Caricature' for three consecutive years," he says. "I'm expecting a bigger audience this year. The event was very successful last year. The opening ceremony was a real Egyptian night in San Francisco, starting with live music played by the Egyptian band Flowers of the Nile and the traditional Egyptian food and beverages, and the portraits I presented of Egyptian novelists Naguib Mahfouz, Khairi Shalabi and Sonallah Ibrahim plus the caricatures of James Brown, Luciano Pavarotti, Benazir Bhutto, King Abdullah, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Saddam Hussein, Amir Peretz, and many, many more. The members of the audience were American and French, besides the Arab community in addition to journalists and friends." Born in 1974 in Cairo; Youssef began working for local newspapers at the age of 14 when he joined Le Progrés Egyptien. "I joined The Egyptian Gazette team in 1989, and then I started working for other publications, including Sabah Al-Kheir magazine and Al-Ahram Weekly before I moved to the United States in 2005," Youssef says. His work has appeared in Le Progrés Egyptien, The Egyptian Gazette, Live Colors and Egypt Today, as well as publications in France, Romania and the US. Youssef's caricatures have been exhibited in Egypt, Korea, France, Belgium, Spain, Cyprus, the US, Germany, Croatia, Slovenia, Holland, Macedonia, Italy, Iran, Poland, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Romania, Australia, Japan, China, Syria and Taiwan. "Back to my history, I had several exhibitions in Egypt, with the latest one being 'Spring of Secrets' at the Cairo Opera House in 2005," he says. "It was an exhibition for my abstract painting. I'm not that active in that field, but from time to time I try to work on some mixed media pieces which don't relate to caricature or illustration at all." Youssef's latest activities in the US have included lecturing on "Sketches and Dialogues" at the International House of UC Berkeley during the Globalisation Programme in November 2007. "My first lecture at UC Berkeley was about the art of caricature and how to transform a sketch from a few lines into a great piece of art through a dialogue between the artist and his tools," he says. "The lecture attracted audiences of different ages, and all of them were interested in the art of caricature." Youssef also represented Egypt at the Egyptian Cultural Day event held at San Francisco State University in November 2007. He is currently vice-president of the Federation of Cartoonists Organisations. Youssef is also a member of several international artistic organisations, including the Egyptian Association for Caricature and the International Association of Art. Youssef was born into a family with a long history of printing in Egypt. His grandfather, Ahmed Abu Suleiman, was a pioneer in the printing field, importing offset printing machines and fine papers and later on art materials including paints and brushes. He set up a business manufacturing paper bags and sketch books, and as early as the 1950s he was recycling paper. All these materials were a great gate to the world of art for a talented boy who loved drawing. "My grandfather noticed my early artistic talent from the first time I went to his storage premises. As a five-year-old I drew a huge mural using oil pastels on one of his storage walls," Youssef says. "As a student of the French school College de la Salle, a school that really cared about arts and sports, I recall the great sculptor Monsieur Saad Mitri, who worked as an art consultant, and whose job was to discover the talented students and guide and teach them. I was so lucky that he also noticed my talent very early, during the fourth primary year. Mitri really helped me to find my way in art, even after I joined the French daily newspaper Le Progrés Egyptien as a cartoonist for the weekly bulletin 'Ibis', which still runs today using the logo I created at that time," he says. "When I started drawing for the press, I was using Indian ink because it gives a strong and sharp line which was very important for the old method of prepress, but later on when we started using scanners I moved on to fine roller ball pen. It was much easier for me and gave me more flexibility in line art. In the early 1990s I started to add some colour to my drawings using designing software instead of gouache, ecoline and watercolours. Despite this vast development in the computer world, I have gone back to the old fashion in drawing and sketching, I'm using pencils! But on the other hand I'm mixing pencil sketches and computer touches. "Before I moved to the States, I started to slow down the beat because I used to work for so many newspapers and magazines in Egypt. I discovered that I was wasting my time doing a lot of work for several establishments, and in the same time I could do less work but better quality. That's exactly what I found here in the US: I work less but a lot -- I mean I'm publishing less compared with Egypt, but I am putting more effort into my artwork and trying to reach the highest quality. "Now I assume that I have more time to read and study and to see other works by other artists. You can imagine how lucky I am to be in a great, active city like San Francisco, where you can see art galleries everywhere and you can see original works by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Picasso, Miró, Dali and more. There is also a great cartoon museum. Bear in mind that I am quite close to the Silicon Valley too -- in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California. So close to Berkeley as well, the most identified city in American memory and the focal point of the hippie movement. "Working as an independent caricaturist in the US is a great challenge for me as an Arab caricaturist," he continues. "The space of freedom available here is not for everyone to enjoy, and I have a limit and I can't cross the line because no one will accept any kind of criticism from an Arab cartoonist. But I don't consider this as discrimination because this happens everywhere, even in Egypt, with foreign cartoonists and artists."
