Artist Rahm Bowen Talks The Significance of Black Pride & The Standard, East Village Mural
Multidisciplinary artist, Rahm Bowen. Photo Courtesy of The Standard, East Village
The beauty of Pride is that it holds special and different meanings for everyone within the LGBTQIA+ community. Especially for Pride Month in New York City, the celebration has become more diverse than ever. In honor of this growing inclusivity (with a spotlight on the Black LGBTQIA+ community), The Standard, East Village partnered with Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Rahm Bowen for a public paint mural.
Titled Beyond the Horizon of Time, the mural stands tall at 15 feet and beautifully captures Black lineage with seven figures all painted with the colors of the pride rainbow flag. It's a perfect balance of classic aesthetics our community grew up with while also tying in contemporary painting techniques. But the celebration doesn't stop there. Along with the mural, The Standard, East Village put on various events at NO BAR, the property's inclusive, cocktail bar and event space (also where the mural lives).
There was a "Sip n Paint" event with NO BAR's ongoing Art After Dusk series with Bowen on June 21. On June 24, EDITION's editor-in-chief Bianca Gracie attended NO BAR's pride celebration with The Soapbox Presents drag brunch DIVAS THROUGH THE DECADES. There, Bowen put the final touches on the mural as various drag queens performed lively renditions of Tina Turner's "Proud Mary", Beyoncé's "Break My Soul" and even danced in the rain for Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande's "Rain On Me". The energy was warm, inclusive, welcoming and electric — which is all reflective of New York City Pride.
In the midst of the brunch, Bowen spoke to EDITION about their art identity, the inspiration behind the new mural and what more can be done to protect the Black queer community.
I would love to know what pride means to you.
I love that it is focused on this moment in queer history. So much of it has helped push our culture at large. But for me, pride really emphasizes just showing up for yourself and being very authentic and unapologetic about the space you take up in the world. The pride that you build by disrupting spaces allows people even outside of the queer community a chance to feel some sense of pride in themselves and become something that is less binary. I feel like sometimes people who identify as straight or people who don’t identify with queer culture get very rigid in their self-expression. And for people within the community who express certain pride or queerness, I feel like it trickles [down]. Sometimes it allows people to feel more comfortable doing things like dyeing their hair pink, wearing loud pants, or putting on crazy eye makeup. So what pride is for me, is that sense of authenticity and being very unapologetic.
Drag queens at the "Divas Through The Decades" brunch at The Standard, East Village's NO BAR. Photo by Weston Kloefkorn/Courtesy of The Standard, East Village
Your mural, of course, celebrates Blackness. How did you originally land on the idea?
How my process goes is that I will do a lot of sketching and sometimes the sketches don't go anywhere, or sometimes they evolve and turn into what happens to be the painting. So in this case, I had a sketch and it was very elusive. But it derived from this painting my aunt has in her house. And it's one of those very notable contemporary art paintings by the Black artist Tim Ashkar. It’s called “The Beauty of Color”. Every black person I feel like has seen it. I was looking at it. And I was like, “Wow some things I've overlooked.” I've always been very attentive to art and very observant. But some of the pieces growing up, I think I've overlooked a little bit.
My idea for the composition was derived from the layering, the full spectrum of people and just how sensitive it is to detail. It just feels really strong. So the sketch that I did was very lucid, but it came from something like that. Sometimes when I'm making pieces, a title will come to me first and then I'll work through that. Or sometimes it'll come after. But this time, the title came first. And the title of the mirror was beyond the horizon of time. And so with that in mind, it led me to really playing with symmetry and just really trying to depict where that title led me to. And then also, it was pride themed, and I use a lot of highly saturated color my work anyways.
Something I love to do is use the undertones and have them show through the skin. I've never used a few colors, like green. I’m now trying to make sure I really play with as much color as possible. So it was a really fun chance for me to use green in a way that I haven't used it before. It was a really fun chance to experiment as well. Also just knowing that it’s going to be something that is seen, and people are going to engage with it. I think it was important to have a number of figures represented. Because a lot of time in the past I was doing just mostly portraits just one singular figure, and I’m looking to challenge myself more.
You mentioned you overlooked the painting, but it sounds like it was more of a subconscious thing. Going with the title Beyond the Horizon of Time, the painting has a timeless element to it. Your auntie’s generation had a certain art form, but we millennials and Gen Z can still relate to it. So I feel like the mural has a transcendence factor.
Thank you. I feel really strongly about it. That's something me and a few of my friends talk about. Pretty often I'm very focused on making things that stand the test of time and it doesn't feel trendy. I really do push to make things that feel timeless.
The "Divas Through The Decades" brunch at The Standard, East Village's NO BAR. Photo by Weston Kloefkorn/Courtesy of The Standard, East Village
I would love to know how you describe your style of art.
I primarily focused on Black figures, as you've seen through my other work. That’s something that I do take pride in: carving this space for Blackness to be celebrated in a way where it is highlighting maybe what feels like unconventional forms of beauty, or just an otherness or a queerness. I really lean into that, because I feel like that is what drew me into visual art growing up. Just watching Missy Elliott videos. I was like, “Who is this woman with these finger wave?”
Yes, and the black trash bag. She’s so innovative.
Absolutely. Also, I’m really big on color and the way color harmonizes and can build a story and really have this engagement. Going back to saying that I only paint black figures, there's a million color combinations that we have with our skin that we can highlight.
We have our own rainbow.
Yes, so I've never really used green, but there are people who have green undertones in their skin. Or they have more olive undertones or a more neutral undertone. With that in mind, there's so many color combinations I can pair and then those colors complement one another. And I will say I naturally am just very dramatic. [laughs] So I feel that is represented in my art, with how strong I layer because I see the layerings as contours. They have some dimension and I stack them. I would imagine if you were to take transparent sheets, they would exist in alignment. So my primary background is drawing. I was drawing for years before I started painting.
Rahm Bowen putting the final touches on the mural. Photo by Weston Kloefkorn/Courtesy of The Standard, East Village
Do you remember what year you officially started painting or getting commissions?
So I did my first ever painting in 2013. My last year of high school.
This is your 10-year anniversary.
Yes, so I want to say I started taking commissions by my third or fourth year doing this but it was smaller stuff. I was very transparent with my journey. It was the time on Instagram where everyone was just collaging in their feed and they're posting everything. People grew a liking to what I was posting. As they saw me progress, people started asking to commission me. My drawing style is also very, heavily contoured. I like to follow lines when I paint and then kind of diffuse the lines to make them look more seamless. Now I feel like my work is the strongest it’s ever been. I love all the stuff I’ve done before. But I feel like now within the last, three or four years, it’s all something that I'm very, very, very proud about.
Do you think it’s because you have more experience? Or maybe because you understand your identity as an artist a bit more now?
I think it’s both. I have a really clear idea of my purpose and my identity. Also, I’ve had a chance to build the skill. 10 years has allowed me the chance to really figure out what works, how to do it a little faster or how to do it a little better. The practice over time, has allowed me to refine it. As I've been refining the skill, developing it has brought me more ideas along the way. I have more confidence in the way I can pick a certain thing. So I’m like, “Let me jump in and try to express it further.”
Nice. Do you seek inspiration anywhere?
I love that. I'm really drawn to fashion and the way people decide to customize their characters. With jewelry and all the piercings. Especially in New York, everything is just so fun. It’s very inspiring seeing the way people would show up because I like to put that in my art in some form. And photography, for sure. I’m very visual. And sometimes even music. I will say other forms of things that sometimes aren't visual, maybe vocal expressions that paint a picture in my mind. I can take it and it develops into something else.
Rahm Bowen putting the final touches on the mural. Photo by Weston Kloefkorn/Courtesy of The Standard, East Village
Pride is always about celebration. But especially within the Black queer community, there’s much more that should be done when it comes to protection and safety.
I would say the ultimate protection is showing up financially for sure. I know visibility has helped us a lot. Giving representation of face and allowing people to be a part of the community at large—not necessarily allowing because we're gonna do it regardless—but giving a presence to what was an unhidden community of people.
I love that visibility, but I feel like the ultimate protection is financial protection. Giving these people top-dog positions, giving them jobs, giving them home safety, and putting them through school. Because a lot of the queer community, sometimes if we don't get to express ourselves or do things that help make us money through our art, we have to go through a lot of strife, whether it be sex work or all kinds of unconventional ways now to make money just to survive.
It’s 2023. The community shouldn't have to resort to that past struggle from the ‘80s and ‘90s.
We shouldn't. I think it's something that is notably pressed across social media. I know sometimes people even laugh and joke about it on Twitter, even people within the community. It’s like, “Oh, there's another person posting a GoFundMe” or “There's another person posting their Cash App some money.”
It's become the norm now and it shouldn’t be.
Right? It shouldn’t be that way. But I know these people don’t do it just because they want to be trendy. These people are absolutely [living a] real life and are in need. So sometimes, I think the finances or just giving the people a true chance outside of Pride Month or when it's most notable for other people to commodify it.
Photo by Weston Kloefkorn/Courtesy of The Standard, East Village
Absolutely. Is there anything you have in the works maybe later this year that you want to tease?
I have been working through making wearables. So bridging the fashion and just really expanding the world in my mind. Sewing has been my newest hobby. I'm really trying just to make it a hobby. So I don’t feel so much pressure to perfect it off the gate. I've taught myself to screen print, I’m learning to sew. And maybe doing collaborative work with some people on my radar. But, let's see where it manifests. I’m always doing commission work. And I love it. I’m very, very grateful and thankful to be able to do that outside of my practice as a fine artist and a painter. I just did something with Santigold.
Oh dope, I interviewed her for our March issue.
She’s a legend. It was so crazy working with her because she set the groundwork for people to really be outside. So I got a chance to help her design these album artworks that I think she’s turning into t-shirts. They released one so far and the other two are coming out sometime soon. There are some other things that I don’t think I can really say, so look out for that!
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Photography by: Weston Kloefkorn/Courtesy of The Standard, East Village