Longing For Touch

Jijo Kuriakose

Interview by C. VanWinkle
November 13, 2023

We should start at the beginning. What was the prompt that you responded to?

It’s a picture that looks to me like someone coming through a window, as if someone is visiting you. If you're familiar with Indian mythology, the childhood stories, the grandma stories, they always have this fictional character who will grant you wishes, just like the genie from Aladdin’s lamp. It can be in terms of faith, like you’re praying to God, but as a queer person, you always want to see an older person who can be a mentor or role model for your own future. In this picture, I felt like it was somebody coming in to help you or help the smaller person. It's like somebody's there to listen to you. That’s what I saw. And it looked like a window. I’ve always liked windows.

I always long for touch. I write stories and poems, and in all these creative depictions, I regard touch with major importance. I express how much I love touch, obviously with consent and understanding of the other person’s comfort. When I saw the prompt, my mind went to the longing to feel touched. I didn’t have a second thought; the window, the light, everything came together.

The imagery in the prompt was vague enough that there are many possible interpretations. I think yours is really beautiful. How did you come to land on this image?

I guess it’s all related to my queer identity. India decriminalized homosexuality in 2018, but of course the culture is very slow to change and it’s still forbidden socially. I live in Kerala in the south of India, where the visibility of queer people is much less compared to the rest of the world. There are gay people who are open and actively fighting for the community, but in terms of the visibility of gay relationships or romance, we don't usually see it openly. Most of the gay people from my state now live outside Kerala, or outside the country, due to the right-wing politics and other forms of homophobia happening here.

I’m 40 years old right now, and there are a lot of younger queer people who call me a daddy. I cherish my state of being as a gay daddy; however, I ensure that this slang doesn’t get perceived as an assertion of power. You can see it in the artwork. The person on the right is bald-headed, so that represents me, and the other person is younger. To be frank, I have a thing for armpits. As much as I enjoy sex and cherish memories of it, I’m more interested in touch, pampering, affection, you know. So the painting depicts a daddy, an older person of some kind, and someone coming through the window to touch them. As I mentioned, I’ve always had a thing for windows.

Ah yes, the windows. Can you tell me about them and all your different imagery here?

Although I’m no longer a believer, I was brought up in a Christian family. Growing up, we always had this very beautiful architecture in our church, with a lot of vintage stained glass. So that sort of imagery sometimes comes into my paintings. I also really like geometry, so I try to place geometric patterns in my paintings as well. And I’m attracted to men who have tattoos and piercings, so I have a nose ring or stud in all my paintings. Coming from a Christian background, most Christian families have paintings based on stories or scenes from the Bible, or portraits of St. Joseph, St. Mary, or Jesus. The divine person will have a halo around their head. I always was fascinated by this halo. It's kind of invisible, but you can feel the aura.

If you’re randomly walking across the road and you see a nice-looking guy, you might wonder if the person is queer, right? I believe in gaydar. There are certain stereotypical mannerisms to let you know, or if somebody smiles at you or you’re sure they’re looking back at you, then you might know that this person is from our community. The vibe thing, right? Well I think of that vibe as like an aura. I believe that queer people have a special aura due to their life struggles, or immense emotional attachment, or the empathy or sympathy they carry for their fellow beings. So for me, the aura in the painting tells me that they’re queer, that they strive for liberation while their queer identities might be invisible like the aura. That’s why I add these icons or certain elements that are present in all of my paintings. The aura is there.

Something I find really striking is all the minute detail, particularly the texture on the bodies. Do you often work with such fine detail?

Yes, I’ve always worked like this. I love textures, patterns, that same geometry thing. I used a Micron pen for the bodies, which is usually used by architects, civil engineers, or fashion illustrators. The Pigma Micron pen is even thinner than a strand of your hair. Your hair is maybe a tenth of a millimeter, right? The nib of this Micron pen can be .5mm, .05mm, and so on. That nib is so small, you cannot actually see it without a magnifying glass. But if you look closely enough or zoom in on the image, that texture is actually hundreds of small circles. This particular piece took 32 hours to finish over a period of three days.

This pen allows me to add details for facial hair and body hair. I personally have a fetish for men with mustaches and beards. Hair represents so much diversity. We call this “hair,” we call this “eyebrow,” we call this “mustache,” we call this “beard.” It's all hair, but the attraction depends on the location. For some people, a lack of hair is a matter of hygiene. To me, having hair is a matter of fetish. For some people, it’s a matter of cultural identity. I love men with hair, and the Micron pen produces such fine lines that can help to create details for the style of the beard and such.

I learned from a senior artist when I was a child how to paint and blend with watercolor. So I’m good at it. Personally I love watercolor. I'm not a full-time artist, so I don’t have to balance my finances to do large-size paintings or acrylic for that matter. For watercolor, you buy the basic tubes of colors and you can do paintings for a year, and the handmade cotton paper is not too costly. With a limited budget, you can do a lot of artwork.

It seems pretty economical in terms of materials, but not at all when it comes to labor. You put so many hours into one piece!

You know, I grew up in a very homophobic society, like most queer people in the world, so I’ve been faced with plenty of homophobic issues. It’s every day, especially when you’re actively creating art or speaking out. And my art is not only about gay romance; I also speak about sex. I speak openly about sexual activities, at least through my photography. And all these homophobic actions can really affect your mental health. I’ve gone to therapy, which helps, but there’s a limit because it can be too expensive for many. But by creating artwork, you’re doing something repetitive for many hours, and it helps to keep yourself focused and away from all these social distractions. You just focus. And believe me, the moment you draw the last circle in the painting and add the signature, it’s like ahhhhh… I delivered a happy baby. Nine months of labor are done. I’m even getting goosebumps right now.

That’s a fantastic way to look at it!

It's not like we purely want our art to sell; we want to be appreciated. Actually, two of my works were recently selected for an exhibition in Delhi. It was a global exhibition curated by a famous art curator named Myna Mukherjee. She has been in New York for years, but she came back to India a few years back and started an organization called Engendered, which centers on using art for social activism. So when you get that kind of appreciation from somebody, it’s like you’ve got a fire on your tail.

For me, art is seasonal. I don’t make art 365 days a year. When I do, I create 20-25 paintings and then it’s off. I have to wait until next summer. Or maybe some trigger has to happen, like you have to fall in love or something. For me, when I’m happy I take photos or write stories, but when I’m sad I make art. So the amount of art I’ve done reflects how much I was sad. But I’m happy afterward, when at the end there’s something creative and colorful that people appreciate. For me, art is therapy, without expecting that anyone will see it or buy it.

Do you consider yourself an activist?

Oh yes. I’ve been doing ground-level LGBTQ activism in South India for the last 12-15 years. I came out in 2013, but even before that I’ve been into community, connecting people since the good old Yahoo messenger group days. Then email groups, then Orkut, then Facebook, now Twitter, Zoom, Instagram, and all this stuff. I was actually engaged to be married to a woman in 2013. It was a fixed marriage. But after getting engaged I came out to my family. And that’s what led me to queer activism.

I realized that there’s a calling inside queer people. Why did you guys start a magazine? It's a calling. You felt that there’s a need for this, right? We can speak about political activism in terms of creating policies and things, but art will stay forever. If I pass away, my art will stay here. My people will be reading about all this after I’m gone, so art is a powerful medium. Without actually speaking to people or writing something about human rights, you can communicate with people.

It makes sense that art can be a tool of activism in any time or place, but sometimes it can get too loud. If you are speaking about sexuality, for example, it can be so loud that it gets censored. Here in Kerala, a lot of magazines do special editions about human rights, or for Valentine’s Day or whatever, and they might feature queer artwork. But if your work is too loud, they will let you know. The editor doesn’t want to feature it because it’s too loud. A photograph of two guys sitting together might be okay, but it’s still censoring artists and that’s part of the problem. And being gay is not just about romance; you have to speak about sexual health and fantasies and non-monogamous relationships and heteronormativity.

You paint and you draw; how does your photography fit in with your other forms of visual art?

When I started doing art, it was always a challenge finding reference images. I didn’t want to take images of random white people from the internet. I wanted to use images from my own region, so that’s why I started doing photography. I started with the fingers of friends I know, and then I started taking pictures of their faces and beards. It was just to collect reference photos. Over a period of time, I started making photos of bodies and now I’m doing it as a profession. Of course, along with the finished photographs, I’m also getting a lot of reference images. This painting was actually inspired by one of my photographs, an image of a younger man touching an older man. So my artwork is actually kind of abstracted versions of the photographs I make.

Now that you’ve gone through this process, what advice would you give to another person getting their prompt today?

My suggestion is to think. I couldn't finish the work before the deadline, but you gave me extra time, which is important. Creating art within a deadline can be a troublesome task. Knowing you have to finish an artwork by a particular time puts pressure on you, but don’t think about the pressure. Focus on the continuation of someone else’s thought. Give yourself time to process what you need to process. That’s my suggestion.

I'm so happy that I could be part of this process. With many other submissions, you have to follow a theme of some kind. But for this project, I was allowed to produce something from my own mind. I am happy that I could create my signature art. I think this is one of my masterpieces, if someone can say that. It really sticks to my area of expertise. I always try to create work in different genres, but at the end of the day it still ends up being queer. [laughs]

Call Number: Y116VA | Y118VA.kuLo

Jijo Kuriakose is an artist, photographer, and writer who pursues mixed media fine art practices to depict his notions on same-sex intimacy and relationships across the facet of geography and space. He prefers to stand lost in art galleries and museums as much as he is keen to expand knowledge on queer art his/theirstory and contemporary art practices which present diversity of human nature. He looks for better opportunities to present his art, photography, and poetry work.