1979–present
Hana Hajjar
Hana Hajjar was born in 1979 in Medina, the youngest of nine children, and began drawing cartoons at twelve. Her first drawings were about the war in Palestine and called for it to end. Later she drew for the newspaper Arab News and other publications, and taught cartooning and oil painting. She is known as the only woman in Saudi Arabia specialising in political cartoons.
Biography
Hana Hajjar’s first cartoons were about the war in Palestine, and they ended with a call for it to stop. She was twelve at the time.
She was born in 1979 in Medina, into a family in which she had nine brothers; she was the youngest of them all. She went to school in Medina, then moved to Jeddah and settled there. She studied art at several art institutes in Egypt; which institutes they were and how long the studies lasted is not known. Her professional work is tied to print. Hajjar drew for the English-language newspaper Arab News, where, by some reports, she was one of the few women on the staff. She also made cartoons for the magazine of the women’s section of the Saudi Chamber of Commerce, for a Gulf magazine, for a magazine on media and communication, for publications on health and the environment, and for magazines devoted to cartooning itself. Her subjects included social, political and sports themes. There is also a series of works on AIDS prevention, as well as an earlier poster drawing against the wasteful use of water, dated to the year 1418 of the Islamic calendar (roughly 1997–1998 in the Gregorian calendar).
She is called a political cartoonist in the narrow sense because, on the available evidence, there is no other woman in Saudi Arabia who draws political cartoons. She mocked politicians and social customs: inequality between men and women, politics, the economy. Hajjar herself has said that her drawings reflect discontent in society, but that she is careful not to go too far, so as to keep her job and be able to go on publishing. I think that remark is worth keeping in mind when looking at her drawings: the limits of what is possible for her are set by the conditions of newspaper work.
She taught cartoon drawing and oil painting. She is a member of the Saudi Arabian Society for Culture and Arts and of the association of artists Bayt al-Fannanin al-Tashkiliyyin (“House of Visual Artists”).
Profile notes