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Wanted: artists from under-represented countries

In response to my posting the article below on the Malaysian cartoonist Lat, reader dcyc left the comment, “w00t! As a Malaysian, I’m proud to see a fellow countryman get a mention in this blog.” dcyc’s comment implies ever so gently that it is surprising and unusual that a Malaysian artist would get featured – we wouldn’t expect to see, for instance, someone write, “As an American, I’m proud to see a fellow countryman get a mention in this blog”. It resonated with me because a few days back I posted about the First International Manga Award going to Lee Chi Ching and invited Drawn! readers to post reviews of his work. But no one did. It makes me wonder if Drawn! is read by a really Euro- and North American-centric audience, possibly because the blog’s language is English, or possibly because we contributors are reflecting our own culture most.

So here’s my challenge. Find me the most forgotten, underrepresented country in English-speaking art-blogdom, and the best artist-who-draws-really-well who lives there, and I’ll post the top three. Please pick artists who suit Drawn!, and write me one sentence why they qualify. Submit your suggestions to jaleen@gmail.com by next Monday, July 23. And yes, you can nominate yourself!!

UPDATE: Thanks for all the great suggestions. There are too many coming in for me to respond personally to you all, so this is my expression of gratitude.

Unfortunately my wording above has caused some confusion… some people mistook it for meaning I’m only looking for English-speaking artists. NO!!! What I meant is that I’m after artists who have been neglected on blogs that are dominated by English-speakers/writers like me. You see, I speak only English, and so I talk to other people and do Google searches in English, and that means what and who I know is language-limited. I am theorizing – and I hope I’m wrong – that art blogs that operate in primarily one language tend to miss a lot of what’s going on in the world. This effort of mine is to test that theory and remedy it if it should be true.