During a dark time last year, local artists brought life and colour to the streets of New York’s Soho, bedecking the walls in painted murals as a tribute to the tragic murder of George Floyd and in patronage to the Black Lives Matter movement.

In admission of its complexity, art seems set to continue to attract the attention of those who would prefer it to be silenced. Inextricably linked to notions of liberty, truth, and justice, Beezlebaby was among the fellow black artists whose work was crushingly defaced by residents of Soho, opposing the BLM cause and hoping to fetter its traction.

Limiting the ability for people to create and show their work, hinders society as a whole, for art is an outlet through which emotions and imagination can be explored. Every aesthetic decision has inherent value behind it and if every decision is executed by the same people and censorship such as this sustains to be legitimised by institutions, then the art world and the world surrounding it will never encompass our whole culture. Beezlebaby’s work is a reminder of our responsibility to remain consistent in both our allyship with BIPOC artists, as well as in the obligation to speak out and continue to create for the greater good, even in the face of adversity.

Tell us your story. How did you become an illustrator?

I’ve been drawing since I can remember to be honest. I would run home from the bus stop in elementary school to watch Sailormoon and Sakura Card Captures, animation in general I found really fascinating. Cartoons can develop a whole universe through a signature art style, I was always trying to figure out how to create something like that. Consistent and professional art classes weren't really a financial option as a kid, and I went to regular public schools in New York that didn't have a budget for a multitude of art courses. I would come up with ways to try and teach myself how to draw like by replicating art of my favorite femme cartoon characters for hours, eventually from there on I just kept experimenting stylisticly until I got something that felt specific to me. Art was also how I handled a lot of my anxiety as a kid, doodling was an escape and a therapeutic experience for me. I doodled constantly at home as a kid or all day in school as sort of a coping mechanism and I’ve always had that relationship with it. It’s been a little bit of a rocky transition from art being something I alway did strictly for me and my mental health into something that's now what I'm making a living off of but it’s definitely a learning process and a balancing act I'm getting more familiar with.

Where do you find your inspiration? Who, or what, are your current muses?

My inspirations are always based in nostalgia. As a kid I would flip through catalogs that we got in the mail and I’d find pages my dad doodled on giving the models chipped teeth, stitches, snot coming out of their noses and I was obsessed with them. Funny enough they’ve been a big artistic influence on me as of late. I’m definitely noticing my art transitioning away from gory themes into something closer to cartoon grossout with stuff like bandaids, cuts, dirt, and bugs all over someone's face. My dad and I use to watch a lot of creepy cartoons together too like Ren and Stimpy where there would be a scene zooming in on a characters face exposing all of the nasty details similar to what my dad was drawing in our magazines, I remember both of us getting a kick out of those kinds of cartoons. Now I tend to finish up drawing the face of a pouty pinup sex demon, and then I’ll step back and start removing a tooth and adding a bone exposing bloody hole in the face and I’ll think back fondly on those memories for reference.

How would you describe the vibrant, playful and sometimes even risqué subjects in your illustrations? What are the messages you'd like to get across in your art?

I always think of my work as somewhere in the middle of hyper femininity and hyper sexuality, I like to play with the levels of each sometimes to the point of excess and it becomes borderline grotesque. I love adding detailing everywhere so everytime you come back you notice something you didn't see before. I strive to kind of trick people with my work where at first glance they are taking in the happy feeling that comes from initially seeing so many vibrant colors and glitter, and then that perception slowly starts getting warped the longer you look and start noticing the erotic details and blood splatters all over everything. I often don't make a lot of work with a specific message in mind for me it's more like I’m dumping my brain everytime I create, but It's really fun for me to hear how others interpret my work or how seeing details they missed the first time changes how they initially perceived it.

How does being a black female artist inform your work?

As a kid when I was teaching myself how to draw by drawing my favorite cartoon characters, I noticed that none of them were black. I was learning to draw white women and I remember getting older and questioning why I’m making art of people who do not look or represent me or my family, why wasn’t there much representation of black women in animation in general? My mom grew up experiencing a lot of racism even within her own community. She always instilled in us to love our self and and love all black features because the world is designed to make you question that as a black person. I definitely struggled with my identity as a mixed black woman in my adolescence as most black women do unfortunately. Especially growing up super alternative and being told my interests weren’t “black enough”. I was super into scene culture , Visual Kei fashion, I loved japanese music growing up. As I got older my art evolved into creating work I felt was missing from my life and was longing for my younger self to see, black women being highlight doing and dressing the way I was told wasn’t “black”, being weird, spooky, gross ,freaky and alternative, I made it a consistent theme in my personal work to only draw women of color because that's who my work is for.

Last year you saw one of your murals for BLM defaced by a racist member of the public. I am so sorry you had to experience that. How did this impact both you and your work going forward?

I went into that situation knowing there was a huge chance that piece was going to get damaged. When I showed up to sign in before I could even say anything about what I was going to paint a woman running the same type of organization gathering muralists for SOHO asked me not to paint any BLM messages because “theres enough of that, paint something positive”. There were multiple programs contacting artists for murals but they were all run by the residents of SOHO, this is this womans neighborhood and my work was not wanted for what I initially was told it was intended for. I decided to stay and make a piece anyway with a statement that was intended to make her and her community uncomfortable, but when I had finished I grew very attached to the statement relating it to my mother as well and I dedicated it to her. When it actually did get vandalized I was less emotionally prepared for that situation then I initially thought I was going to be . It was a painful experience that simultaneously made me more protective of my work as well as more empowered by it. I'm glad it got the reaction it did from the people who saw it in the end. It taught me there's power in my work I never considered it could hold, the energy should be protected and shouldn’t be provided for just anyone. My art lives on the internet mainly and I meet a lot of people on social media who understand it, so experiencing in real life how it could have such a drastically different effect on people because it was black was jarring. The diverse reactions it got from other black woman finding an instant connection to it and understanding the love the message has in it, to a white woman feeling so challenged by it she needed to take time out of her day to cover someone else's efforts or even any of the other aggressions I experienced during that situation was very informative for me as a black artist working within the white art world. It helped me protect the energy my art can convey and preserve it for projects with my intentions in mind.

Despite some progress in recent years, the art world proceeds to be dominated by a tremendously white-washed standard of elitism, oftentimes operating under the hypocrisy of faux-allyship. What advice would you give to emerging BIPOC artists, looking to succeed in the industry?

I’m not sure what advice to give emerging brown artist because I’m still very much with them in trying to navigate a predominantly white world of art, it seems to be a never ending unavoidable thing no matter what stage your in. White artists who had claimed “allyship” last summer came out of the quarantine in 2021 turning their backs on us once again and continuing to gatekeep and segregate the community. It seems to be an issue spanning all corners of the art world and it's disheartening to see it go back to how it was before the BLM movement but it's not surprising. Even the progress that has been made seems mainly performative and more so used to save face, I haven't really seen much change in the foundation of the issues its all very surface level. My advice to other brown artists would be to be protective of your energy and your work especially when in predominantly white spaces, I’m learning to be more selective of which projects will understand and respect me as a black artist and not jeopardize my integrity.

It is extremely admirable the way you use your voice to articulate injustice and this should not be undermined by opposition. How do you tackle the issue of censorship when disseminating your work?

I think its becoming more and more of a challenge recently since social media is huge platform you could utilize to have a discussion and bring awareness to censorship and injustices , but the people behind social media are also a big contributor to those issues themselves so its almost like screaming into the void at times. Social media does help you find a community that will support you outside of it as well and that's really where I find a lot of support within my own community of other brown artists. In the case of that mural I refused to not be persistent, I re painted my image the week I found out it was vandalized and made daily steps to distance my work from the organization and it took a lot of energy confronting many resident so SOHO who wanted me to be silent, wanted to keep the piece, want me to talk about my experience without mentioning the vandalism, protecting the vandalizer. I’m very thankful for the people who reached out to me during that time and defended my work without me even asking that of them.

What would you do in a world without boundaries?

I’ve been working on establishing healthy boundaries in my personal life so It’s interesting to think of a world without them since some boundaries can be constructive. A lot of societal boundaries get involuntarily enforced upon people for things out of their control and are highly destructive. I definitely encounter certain boundaries for simply being black and for being a woman and I'm currently trying to unpack and challenge what I’ve been told I couldn’t do or have because of those two things. I definitely would feel more liberation and less anxiety in life and with my art in general without certain boundaries, I’d also have a stronger trust in the art world as a whole.

Without boundaries there really aren't many limitations to what would be possible artistically and It would be ideal to see artists of color flourish without the boundaries created within creative spaces today.

Lastly, how do you see your work evolving in the future?

Theres so much creatively I want to do it's both exciting and exhausting figuring out where to start. I would love to dive more into expanding the psycho sexual femme sucubus universe that is Beelzebaby in any way. My love of animation will always be in my heart so I hope to learn more about that in the future in any form traditional 2D, 3D, stop motion, any of it even making comics has been on my mind. A Beelzebaby fighting game is also definitely on my bucket list, one day fingers crossed. Smaller scale I’d love to start getting serious about transitioning into tattooing as well, It’s always been an obsession of mine since I was a kid and I’d love for it to be my reality.