Comic strip artist May Solimar to illustrate Brazilian priorities at the G20
São Paulo illustrator will be responsible for the “G20 Comics” project, which will approach global themes in an accessible and impactful way. Project will highlight issues such as the climate, sustainability, and inequalities from the everyday perspectives of a Black Brazilian mother.
“Art has this gigantic power to convey messages, to touch people, to make them reflect about issues and feel emotions while they access it,” advocates May Solimar, comic strip artist, advertiser, and designer. She will be responsible for illustrating the priorities of the world's largest economies in the G20 Comics project to be featured on the forum's official website.
The project aims to portray themes such as the climate, sustainability, and combating inequalities, which are at the center of global discussions, in a simple way and to provoke reflections about them. The comic strips will be produced in three languages and distributed weekly on Fridays to the subscribers of G20 News. They will be available on the website the following week. The initiative seeks to demonstrate, through various languages and formats, how the debates going on at the G20 affect the lives of all people in every part of the world.
May Solimar believes the illustrations can reach people, provoke reflections, and help take the G20 to a new audience. “Through the illustrations and comic strips, we can build a narrative and demonstrate situations that make some issues easier to understand. Sometimes the person cannot read a long text but needs to access information more quickly. Drawings are simple and we can tell a story about a specific situation,” she explained.
The artist added that the comic strips are a means to share ideas, useful for the moment when people have wider access to large amounts of information while time to digest it is scarce. “The person can simply read the comic strip and share it. The strips can help more people to understand certain themes,” May said.
Everyday images
May's illustrations portray everyday scenes from the perspective of a Black mother living in São Paulo, Brasil's largest metropolis. They raise awareness about issues such as social, racial, and gender inequalities, combating climate change, and human rights defense, all transversal to the priorities of Brasil's G20 Presidency.
“My illustrations and comic strips are often a way of venting about situations I have gone through or heard someone talk about. I think my art is political precisely because it brings the experiences of a Black woman living in a racist and sexist society. I bring a lot of this into my art to raise the discussion and stir reflection and debate. These have always been my goals. I want to touch people and make them reflect on the significance of my art in their lives,” May declared.