Cartoonist ARES wins Grand Prize at COVID-19 event in China

June 12, 2020

Cuban cartoonist ARES wins Grand Prize in COVID-19 event in China.

Arístides Hernández Guerrero, Ares, is perhaps the Cuban graphic humorist who has deserved the greatest amount of international awards in the last two decades, but the one he has just conquered, the Grand Prize of the International Anti-Coronavirus Contest UYACC-2020, implies, on a personal level, a deeply meaningful significance, for being dedicated to exalting the struggle of Health personnel everywhere in the world against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ares works with knowledge of the subject. Before being an artist he was a doctor and practiced the profession, initially not in a city office, but in a complex rural area of Guantánamo, where he completed his social service. Although later he specialized in Psychiatry, on foot and horseback he lived the experience of guaranteeing optimal health indicators in populations that in other places and other systems do not have our privileged care.

Every day Cubans at nine o'clock at night applaud the health personnel and other branches that work to overcome the pandemic. This is Ares' applause, a graphic composition that, in several languages, thanks the dedication of doctors, nurses, transporters and support workers.

To the contest, convened from Beijing by the organizations iui Youth Cup, Culture & Amp, the International Multimedia Association and the Qing Jin Technology company, more than 7,000 entries arrived electronically from 54 countries, which reflected how daily life has faced unprecedented challenges in these times with regard to work, education and social life.

With gold medals, the artists Rasoul Hajizadeh (Iran) and Wu Xu (China) were awarded. Another Cuban, Angel Boligán, who has been developing his career in Mexico for years, obtained a silver medal, along with Indonesian Jitet Kustana and Turkish Musa Gumus.

"I have taken advantage of the isolation to devote myself more to creation –declared Ares– with the conviction that in our country, particularly, we will move forward."