2019 cartoon ridiculing the United Kingdom's hesitation to leave or stay within the European Union, since the Brexit referendum in 2016.
JacPé is a Belgian graphic artist, illustrator and political cartoonist. He is bes- known as the house cartoonist of the Walloon satirical right-wing magazine Ubu-Pan since 1997.
Life and career
Jacques Peten was born in 1949 in Brussels. He should not be confused with the Belgian alpine skier Jacques Peten (1912-1995). In 1984, Peten published his first book, 'Jac Peten's Computers' (Éditions Eco-Logic, 1984). Since 1997 he is house cartoonist of the satirical right-wing weekly Ubu-Pan, a fusion of two former satirical magazines with a similar ideology: Pan and Père Ubu. Among his colleague cartoonists in this publication are Samuel (Samuel Lemaire) and Delamine. In 1999, he published 'Petit Dictionnaire de l'Absurde' (Éditions Delta, 1999) and 'Burqamania' (Éditions de l'Arbre, 2010). The latter book had a foreword by politicologist Anne-Marie Lizin. Lizin's contibution was not only notable because she was a prominent politician, but also because she used to be active for the socialist party PS, whose ideology is not shared by the editorial board of Ubu-Pan.
Cartoon by Jacpé, commenting on how the Académie Française accepts the feminisation of several professions. The female police officer wants to report a "femicide", but her male colleague corrects her that its a "homicide, since the gender is neutral." He explains: "Homicide: death of a human being", but his female colleague states that the "a" in "human being" is still masculine. She then reports the death as a "femicide of a human being", which their chef doesn't understand.
Outdoor activities and exhibitions
JacPé is known for often visiting political congresses and making caricatures and sketches there on the spot. Between 1980 and 2004 he exhibited his work in several Belgian galleries.
Recognition
In 2018, JacPé won third prize at the Press Cartoon Belgium Contest in Knokke with a cartoon depicting the COP 23 conference in Berlin about climate change. The cartoon in question shows an Eskimo waiting for initiatives, even though most of the ice around him has already melted. The first prize went to Canary Pete, the second one to Marec.
Between 16 May and 10 July 2013, Jacpé was one of several Flemish comic artists to exhibit original artwork during the 'Wereld van de Strips in Originelen' ('The World of Comics in Originals') exhibition in the Flemish Parliament in Brussels. The exhibition, organized by art critic and museum curator Jan Hoet and politician Dany Vandenbossche, later gained controversy when N-VA politician Jan Peumans objected to a French-language speech balloon on the official expo poster. Since the posters were already printed, the speech balloon was simply blanked. Numerous participating comic artists protested against this censorship, with several, including JacPé, asking to have their own cartoons and comics to be removed from the expo.
2011 comic strip by Jacpé, mocking Flanders as an independent republic "with Brussels as capital", where Walloons are persecuted like the Jews during World War II. In the fifth panel Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo is depicted as a host of a resistance radio channel, while in the next panel politician Olivier Maingain is executed.