The Fábrica del Humor, which belongs to the Quevedo Institute of the Arts of Humour of the General Foundation of the University of Alcalá (Madrid), organises the first activity after the signing of the cultural cooperation agreement with the Embassy of Pakistan in Spain on 13 October 2022.
From 27 January to 5 March, the exhibition "Gogi visits Spain" by the Pakistani author Nigar Nazar can be visited.
In addition, at 6 p.m. today, the lecture"Towards equality with humour" by the author will be broadcast live on the YouTube channel of the University of Alcalá.
About Nigar Nazar
According to her website, Nigar Nazar is the first woman cartoonist in Pakistan and also in the Muslim world. Five decades ago, she invented her character, Gogi, a young woman who is not afraid to speak her mind, and began creating strips for a local newspaper, becoming the first female cartoonist in Pakistan's history.
Since then, Gogi has been gaining popularity, bringing many social and political issues to the fore in a humorous way. Nazar's work has also been a standard-bearer for Pakistan around the world, as his cartoons have been published in countries such as Turkey, Libya, Australia, the UK, Africa and Kyrgyzstan.
Since the beginning of her career she has championed the cause of women's rights and has received numerous awards, including the Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah award in 2005 for her contribution to art. In 2014 she was chosen by the BBC as one of the"100 women who have made a difference". In 2015, a major Japanese television channel, NHK, produced and broadcast a short documentary about her. In 2019 she was featured in the picture book"Pakistan for Women" by Maliha Abidi, which tells the stories of 50 Pakistani women who "have achieved something extraordinary".
Nigar Nazar is the founder of Gogi Studios, which since the 1990s has been involved in various national and international campaigns to raise awareness of social issues through books, brochures, manuals, posters, hospital murals and illustrations on buses and vans. She is the author and illustrator of 30 books for young readers. Her graphic novel on corruption was presented by the President of Pakistan.
She has been a Fulbright scholar twice and was the first to be nominated for the"Fulbright Specialist Program" at Colorado College. She is also one of the founding members of the Asian Youth Association for animators and cartoonists (AYAAC), China.
Nigar put aside the book she was working on for Clean and Green Pakistan, when the coronavirus hit her country; she volunteered to address children's mental health by making a series of arts and crafts programmes on her YouTubeb channel, under the title HAPPY HANDS.
