Dear participants,

The collaborative team of the Institute of Culture and Art within the International Slavic University “Gavrilo Romanovich Derzhavin”, Sveti Nikole has had the great honor and pleasure to thank you publicly for participating in the Second International Competition about Caricature and Aphorism “Me, Itar Pejo (Sly Peter)” and any other theme which was opened from 15th July, 2020 until 30th September, 2020.

The aim of the competition was to stimulate artistic creation and to provide a platform by which people can express their opinions through caricatures and aphorisms. There are 253 cartoons, aphorisms written by 63 authors and 158 cartoons in children’s and youth selection of the competition.

The great interest and the need to emphasize the message you sent to all of us once again has confirmed that young people are inexhaustible source of ideas and their courage to emphasize the invisible, apparently encouraging us to give the children and the youth a special place and opportunity to take part in (Children and youth competition), and we have additionally allocated funds for the awarded works.

The large number of works of art that have arrived not only from our country, but also from many other countries around the world has only confirmed our hunger for artistic creation and the desire of the “people” of different age groups to express their special language with complete freedom and autonomy, imagination, spontaneity and creativity.

We are all aware of the fact that art contains many psychological roots of things related to our reality. The new reality that we “have been living” for several months due to the pandemic caused by COVID -19 in a way, was used by many artists as a “time for art” and it has contributed to the opportunity to encourage creative thinking, finding “new talents” and works that deeply inside emphasize the (personal, collective, universal) consciousness. Nevertheless, we have managed to motivate and inspire you this time as well – when everyone survived, experienced, and felt the fear of “tomorrow” with all the positive and negative elements of the inner feeling and corresponding to the outside of man, with all his character traits, and through the multitude of psychological messages that are rooted in the “invisible” and the latent feeling to create your artistic expressions and for a moment to forget “the thing” that defocuses you from “the life you wish you have had”.

Why the topic “Me, Itar Pejo (Sly Peter)” was considered? Right at this moment, we aware of the fact that being focused on one of the most humorous characters in this area will take you to a relaxing state and for a moment will make you smile, remind you of your childhood, of your values that kept you through good times and bad times with all life events.

Certainly, the free caricature and aphorism topic was of great importance because of the challenge that was expected from your works of art through these artistic forms of expression.

The works that we received are of particular importance to the general public because they present the reality through your thought, wittingly expressed, which contains irony, sarcasm, global paradox, a twist in order to point out the meaningful point, as well as an attempt through your creativity to cause awaking to the natural necessity for jokes and laughter within “the man”, but at the same time you have given us the opportunity to see the key role for the intellectual development of our predecessors, as well as, for our contemporaries, so that we can the most realistically perceive, or discover all those elements of chaos, disorder, and through irony, sarcasm and appropriate wit without vulgarities send us the inner scream for THE EXPERIENCE we have lived through or have survived all of us in an appropriate way.

You, dear participants, have given yourself, you have given us, and you have given to the whole public works that are part of your commitment, your thought, your wit, your talent that may be an indicator for us to see things (more) clearly so that the biggest psychological projects can be solved – Personality and Community, through your feelings as a creator of this type of work of art.

The Committees that were in charge of perceiving, determining and detecting the works as a whole in all aspects, which are significant in order to select the best and the most complex works were faced with a difficult challenge. We hereby present the awarded works:

Awarded in the cartoon cathegory

1st place – Golden Plaque, gold statuette Itar Pejo, 300 Euros cash prize – Luc Descheemaeker – Belgium.

2nd place – Silver Plaque, silver statuette Itar Pejo, 200 Euros cash prize – Ray Costa, Brasil. 

3rd place – Bronze Plaque, bronze statuette Itar Pejo, 100 Euros cash prize – Rasoul Haijzadeh, Iran.

Special prizes – diploma of significant success

Marko Ivic, Croatia

Blazhe Dokuleski, Macedonia

Maya Tcholakova, Bulgaria

Edi Dharma, Indonesia

Keti Radeska, Macedonia

Sudarmanto Bogel, Indonesia

Tsocho Peev, Bulgaria

Serpil Kar, Turkey

Awarded in the aphorisms cathegory

• 1st place – Golden Plaque, gold statuette Itar Pejo, 300 Euros cash prize – Slobodan Simic, Serbia.

• 2nd place – Silver Plaque, silver statuette Itar Pejo, 200 Euros cash prize – Ninus Nestorovic, Serbia.

• 3rd place – Bronze Plaque, bronze statuette Itar Pejo, 100 Euros cash prize – Milan Kuridža, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Special prizes – diploma of significant success

• Vlado Vlahovic, Montenegro
• Miroslav Shterjovski, Macedonia
• Arkadiy Davidovich, Russia
• Jovo Nikolic, Republika Srpska
• Marjan Angjelovski, Macedonia
• Deana Sailovic, Serbia
• Maja Tsekova, Bulgaria

Awarded in the children’s and youth category

1st place – Golden plaquette, gold statuette Itar Pejo, 100 Euros cash prize, painting set – Stefan Stankovski, Macedonia

2nd place – Silver Plaque, silver statuette Itar Pejo, 50 Euros cash prize, painting set –  Karina Nurpisova, Russia.

3rd place – Bronze Plaque, bronze statuette Itar Pejo, 30 Euros cash prize, painting set, Radica Stojkoska, Macedonia.

Special prizes – diploma of significant success

Angela Sibinovska, Macedonia

Jana Buteska, Macedonia

Mihaela Vasilevska, Macedonia

Eva Dejanovska, Macedonia

Vasilij Zakoski, Macedonia

Alina Yagofarova, Russia.

We will contact the awarded individuals during the month of December in order to arrange the shipping of the prizes. In the meantime, you can contact us on: itarpejo@kultura.msu.edu.mk.

All the other participants will receive an electronic certificate on the e-mail address they applied from.

We cordially greet all of you and we expect you to take part in our next projects as participants, initiators of next ideas, but also as critics of internal and external dialectics.

Sonja Rizoska Jovanovska, Phd,
Director of the Institute of Culture and Art at the International Slavic University G. R. Derzhavin.