A pencil of freedom for Patrick Zaki. Gianluca Costantini
Cartoon Club dedicates one of its exhibitions to an editorial project that it considers fundamental to demonstrate how the language of comics is able to illustrate the sensitivity and attention to the crucial issues of our time, in particular respect for human rights.
The case of Patrick Zaki, which continues to be widely discussed in Italian and European newspapers for two years, is effectively summarized by Laura Cappon, a journalist who has closely followed the events in Egypt since the days of Tahrir Square and the so-called “Arab Spring”, and by the designer Gianluca Costantini, whose descriptive style leaves the reader the right interpretative space.
In their Graphic Novel Patrick Zaki. An Egyptian story, they tell the normality of the life of the Egyptian researcher until his arrest, torture, today, hope and where they explain why Patrick’s story also concerns Italy and all of us.
A work that affects current events like a scalpel, allowing us to fully understand everything that is at stake in the Zaki affair. In addition, there was no investigative graphic novel that was able to enclose all this complexity in an intelligent and courageous work, following the tradition of the best comic strip reportages.
Gianluca Costantini is a comic book author and human rights activist, considered one of the leading Italian exponents of graphic journalism. Among his works, Julian Assange: dall’etica hacker a Wikileaks, Pertini fra le nuvole, Fedele alla linea and Libia (on texts by Francesca Mannocchi).
Laura Cappon, for years an attentive chronicler of Egyptian events, is a journalist, correspondent of Mezz’ora in più, Rai 3. He collaborates or has collaborated with Italian and international newspapers such as Domani, SkyTg24, Il Fatto Quotidiano, Al Jazeera English, The New Arab, Radio Televisione Svizzera Italiana and Radio Popolare, and has joined Gad Lerner in reportage on Rai 3. In 2013 he won the “L’Isola che c’è” prize for covering the Egyptian coup, and in 2017 the Peace Envoy award, for a series of articles on Giulio Regeni.
