1. Where are you from and how do this place and those memories influence your work?
I was born and raised in Queens, NY. I am a Queens girl through and through --- I rep Queens more than New York, or even the US tbh. Queens is literally full of the most diverse
neighborhoods on the planet, so growing up here meant I grew up around every sort of person
there is and I learned how to be around people who are like and unlike you all the same. Whether stark contrasts in culture or ethnicity there’s a camaraderie with people of color in New York in all of us being here struggling with the shit this city will throw at you on a daily basis. You can see a lot of the 90s New York that I grew up in my work, especially street scenes or that
summertime stoop life. (Stoops are for winter too though). Public spaces define a lot of my childhood and the importance of those safe spaces is a theme I’m immersed in today too.
It’s funny but I can’t say the diversity of living here showed up in my work at first --- despite my upbringing, the unavoidable influence of mass media meant that my work from youth til two
years ago was populated by white bodies. Despite growing up in a matriarchal brown family of immigrants, whiteness (including Bollywood’s rampant colorism) seeped into my brain and I drew Male and Female forms without realizing that my default was White Male and White
Female. The only thing I used to draw for years was women, and at that, white women -- the
epitome of beauty standards having successfully been force fed to me before I could identify it. My work today has been an undoing and unraveling of all of that destructive mess.
2. What is the earliest age you remember illustrating/ really taking your art seriously?
I remember knowing I could draw as early as the third grade, like recognizing that I had skill, but it wasn’t until early high school that I realized the things I was doing with pencil and paper was a lot more fulfilling than the curriculum at school. I was into the crazy lil narratives of me and all
my friends. I drew alongside all this, just doodling until I got kinda notorious for drawing instead of taking good notes in class, that’s when it became my thing.
Tbh I can’t say I took it seriously until the last year and a half alone, right alongside embracing
queer person of color as an identity. For the first time in my life I’ve been recognizing my talent, my perspective, my voice, and also the weight of what my work means to a lot of black and
brown people who see themselves in my art. This year was the first time I ever told people I’m an illustrator when they ask me what I do and the satisfaction in that has been 24 years in the making.
3. What is your creative process like? And how do you know you finally have something good?
I think any artist will tell you that no piece is ever finally done, but I can definitely tell when I’m on to something good and I know when something is really great coz I am rightfully my own harshest critic, so if I pass all my own expectations and aesthetics then I know I nailed it. Deadlines also help hahhaha.
Right now I work entirely digitally; although I learned how to draw with pencils and paper, art
supplies have always been a resource completely out of reach for me. Even today I don’t think I could afford this luxury of paints and canvases. When I was eighteen, my first boyfriend
Sylvester gifted me a drawing tablet and that one investment opened every creative door for
me. I don’t even work with a scanner or anything --- I’ve got a ton of ideas and concepts that I get really excited to make a new piece and start fresh every time. A lot of my pieces come from a conversation I have; I’m soooo chatty and I’m wild about good phrasing and one line can carry
a whole piece. I love incorporating text into my art for the instant mood and weight and narrative it creates.
My creative process is also entirely fueled by my sad, sorry good for nothing Scorpio heart
hahaha. I loved & lost this year and that whole realm of emotions is represented in my artwork. Making a piece addressing something that’s weighing me down elevates me immediately, it’s so cathartic, and to conceptualize my heartbreak outside of my heavy chest is a real blessing that I
have. I couldn’t handle any of that stuff if I didn’t have this release. I think the reality of letting my emotions bleed into my artwork is what makes the pieces of sweet queer love resonate with
people as much as sweet queer sorrow. In my first show I included a piece I made weeks after this break up and it came from such a sad, sad place. For people to tell me that was their favorite piece amongst all the others was wild. Wild that they could feel where that was coming from, but also wild that they had been through their own shit and resonated with mine. That kind of
connection was new for me and it meant a lot to me. To share my pain, to heal from it, and to let others in turn heal with it is so powerful.
4. We’ve been drawn to your work and your blog for quite some time now. What specifically draws you to create a vast amount of beautiful pieces featuring so many women of color?
Women of color have shown me time and time again their beauty, grace, and strength and I think their power and their legacies have helped me dismantle systems of whiteness that have
been ingrained in me for so long. That’s kinda a lot but whether it’s the incredibly strong Muslim women of my family, the black and brown girls in high school who showed a scrawny closeted queer boy compassion and love, or the incredible women I’m encountering in the QTPOC
community in New York today, or even incredible young talent like you two, these women have had my back and so many others in a world that doesn’t have theirs. I’m self taught, have never
been to art school or nothing and when I was 21 I accidentally drew some features on a woman who, with those lines, ended up looking like a black woman. An accurate depiction of a black
woman --- not just a white woman with darker colored skin labeled as black. It unlocked a world of literal possibility for me and I still have that one notebook where I discovered that ability to
portray ethnicity and will never forget the wonder and beauty of that moment. My so far life’s experiences met and married my talent in that evening.
As a content creator it’s crucial for me to be aware of what work I am creating and putting out
there. Literally what images am I putting into the universe? I wrote earlier how beauty standards had me drawing white bodies for years, based off what I had seen in every form of mass media
on a relentless level. And to be honest even POC bodies in those images were hyper sexualized, or stereotyped, or caricaturized, or downright offensive, or meandering, like no type of reality in these images that millions of people are constantly consuming. We see today the damage of
these things. As a queer brown boy drowning in regular self-hatred, my coming out narrative was met with the gaze of gay white men, hardly the images I wanted or needed as my one idea of community. On a truly devastating level, black lives don’t matter in this country because
whiteness literally will not see them as human. There are real life consequences to the way black culture is stolen and consumed and the way black lives, parallel to this, are dehumanized and disrespected.
“Beauty standards are so damaging and it’s hurtful and destructive that colorism operates with such whiteness, in cultures across the
world. I hated myself before I even had the concepts to know what I hated about myself. I know this story is repeated amongst many people of color in any generation. I imagine other illustrators of color went through a similar
battle as me --- why not create the reality of life, as I personally know it? I draw from what I know and I sit and eat and sleep beside the most powerful black and brown women, who hurt
and live and love like I do. Who are more than their bodies, who are more than their ideas, who are like fully realized and functional and complex people.”
That beauty and strength and integrity of people of color is at the root of my work.
Representation is key --- we have to see ourselves loving, breathing, hurting, being alone, being silly, touching one another, kissing, in our medias as we do in real life. Do we not do those
things? Are people of color, collectively and this generation of young creatives, are we not out here nailing everything we set our minds on? We have to see that fed back to us and so do they. The state is literally out here killing black people because of they’ve never seen them as human;
illuminating black and brown bodies with the humanity and light inside of us, so particularly us, is at the core of what I’m trying to do with my artwork.
5. How did you get involved in Papi Juice? Tell us a little bit about it!
Papi Juice is a monthly dance party based out of Brooklyn that celebrates the lives of queer
male-identified people of color and our friends, fam, and allies. Our resident DJs Adam Rhodes and Oscar Nunez co-founded the party last year when they realized how steeped we were in
navigating nightlife as men of color in predominantly white spaces, whether queer or gay, and all of the bullshit that came from that. Whether exotified, fetishized, or straight up ignored, I
imagine so many people of color can tell you the shit they’ve experienced in a world that should be pleasant to indulge in, and the party became this answer to the reality of not having our own
safe spaces. In a city as enormous as New York, why was there no true place for us, by us? Papi Juice is a totally FUBU effort that’s community based for us and our kids.
I started going last year just as part of the community and in October Oscar and Adam
commissioned me to do one of the flyers. It was my first ever paid gig as an artist! It was the perfect example of the kind of QTPOC community I wanted to build here in New York ---- what
can I do, what do you do, how do we lean on each other and supply one another resources and
uplift us in the process? I brought a really fresh and unique image to the party and they elevated my platform and reach in a way I couldn’t have done by myself. I free-lanced a few more pieces for them before they asked me to come on board full time and join the team and help host and throw the party! I gladly accepted and with our photographer Cristobal Guerra Naranjo, the four of us rounded out Papi Juice. Working with them feels so good and to create this really dynamic, organic effort for my people and my city is such a
rewarding thing. We’ve had a wild year, hosting acts like Maluca, Princess Nokia, False Witness, LSDXOXO, and even held the official after hours event for Afropunk this past August.
Just last night we hosted the after party for an event this brilliant artist Wangechi Mutu threw and this lovely man stopped me at the bar to thank me for the work and space we’ve created for the community. The guy was so appreciative and I got emotional at the bar, it was the sweetest
realest thing to hear from someone not in any of my circles and it meant a lot to me. So much fam comes through and it’s gotten to a point where I don’t recognize most of the beautiful black and brown faces in the room. That’s brilliant. That I throw my favorite party in the city feels so
good, and that it’s more than just nightlife, that it’s an intentional space, is so key and I want that to be a theme for how QTPOC navigate and create these spaces.
6. Do you have anything exciting in store for 2015? I just launched my shop and website and those are two long term goals I’ve had since I was 22, and for that to finally happen is really surreal. When you have something on your plate or mind
for so long and you make it a reality, it’s the most fascinating and fulfilling fruit to bear. I think I learned for the first time this year just how competent and capable I am --- I can accomplish
anything I want to and I think that’s a mantra more of us could use. Literally anything I wanna do I can do it, and I think with my privileges and blessings in mind I can make that shit happen. Anyone could.
I’m fiiiiinally going back to finish my undergrad starting in January which is really exciting
because I am, for the first time in my life, prioritizing my art and my goals and meeting the two. Where it was always just a hobby, I’m now seeing the big picture and appreciating my voice and knowing what I can do for myself and for a lot of people. I’m looking into getting my BFA and
can’t wait to leave this digital realm I’m really well versed in and want to start exploring painting, sculpture, textiles, graphic novels, and the long term goal right now is animation. I would love to put my work into motion and to populate that landscape with the bodies I know we need to see in that media. I also wanna get into zine making and wanna reach out to all kinds of QTPOC narratives that don’t always get told. I wanna tell and illustrate these stories that may only live in our hearts or
heads and I wanna be able to make it less niche and more accessible for kids to spill their hearts
out. My artwork is nothing if not for the community it’s inspired by and I owe everything to these people who’ve helped me become this person I am really glad to be today.
Keep up with Mohammed @ mojuicy.tumblr.com
mohammedfayaz.com facebook.com/mojuicyart