What Do You Get When You Cross FIFA with Syria? –These Caricatures For Peace

War is no laughing matter–unless, like Hani Abbas, you use humor to get people to think and feel outside the box. This May, the Syrian-Palestinian from Yarmouk Refugee Camp in Damascus won the top award for caricaturists from Cartoonists for Peace; here he shares with us his inspiration and goals.

Many of your drawings cross “ordinary” peaceful life with life inside a conflict. Why?

I love to mix subjects and events to show the ironic differences between them. Caricature itself is the art of irony. And in it I go farther to create shock, something that will make you stop and stare and think.

Why this genre?

For me a caricature is a message I should send to as many people as I can everywhere. That’s why I avoid writing in my cartoons; I always try to employ a strong idea to address the mind and touch the heart. There are people suffering all kinds of injustice—murder, displacement—and it’s a duty for me and everyone who has the means to convey the voice of these people.

Taken from:

What Do You Get When You Cross FIFA with Syria? –These Caricatures For Peace