Sanyu Nicolas

EIP: Your work has layers of queer imagery, erotica and fantasy; do you agree with this sentiment and can you elaborate?

SANYU: I absolutely agree. There’s so much beauty and freakish wonder in nature and beyond and that’s what drives the fantasy aspect of my work; melting that which fascinates me together and forming these fantastical moments. A lot of my work explores the beauty and wildness of queer sensuality and sexuality in this kind of shame shedding practice. I think shame serves a purpose in things like community justice and holding people accountable and mitigating harm… but when it comes to sexuality and queer identity, shame can be so paralytic and stifling in self- expression. So I like to push that boundary and depict queer erotica in this pretty and beautiful but sometimes messy and gnarly swell of fantasy.

EIP: You do tarot readings, considering that you are a spiritual person; how did that journey crossover with your work ?

SANYU: Yeah every Tuesday I try to host what I call Tarot Tuesday where people send in questions to my instagram story and I provide them with a tarot reading. The crossover came sometime after I recognized that my tattoo practice was also a spiritual thing. I’ve spoken in the past about spirit trails and how I think we leave a non-linear impact or imprint throughout existence that affects the energy of spaces. I think this also correlates to the spiritual, conversational and physical experience of tattooing and tarot. I was only a little into tarot at the time that I started and it was mostly a fascination with the imagery of different card decks and it grew to me learning more of the story. I like to think that through tattooing I help others in their journey of self evolution and expression and tarot is a similar kind of helping.

EIP: When did you start illustration? Did painting come first? What feels like your passion in the present moment?

SANYU: Drawing came first. I started drawing when I was really young. I was a really sick child and diagnosed with Lupus at 8 years old. This was a catalyst of sorts for this intrinsic need to transmute the pain and confusion and so drawing was just an awesome channel for me. Right now my passion is music. I had a music project called Cryptolect some years ago that’s currently evolving into a new project called Tandem Mirror. It’s trippy and triumphant and electronic and I have a deep raspy voice that I’m exploring with. I met a man at a restaurant last year in Boston who got super tearful when he heard me speaking and really urged me to not waste my voice and I think about that a lot. So I’m working on my creative development and confidence to hopefully use this voice. I don’t want to let him down lol but really I don’t want to leave any regrets on the table.

EIP: We wanna know your inspiration reference wise, what are some crucial films, photographers and artists who deeply resonate with you?

SANYU: I try not to indulge in too much work of other artists and try not to draw too much inspiration because I’ve found that to keep my artistic vision and voice true to myself I need periods of introspection. But I am fascinated by nature, the woods, lava, the ocean and the cosmos.. friends and queer people .. some artists I admire are Octavia Butler, Wangechi Mutu, Silvio Cadelo, Bjork, Imogen Heap, Tracy Chapman, Fiona Apple, Ex:Re, Arca, Fatima Al Qadiri, Caroline Polachek, Florence, my girlfriend Julissa Emile who is a poet..I also like a lot of old black and Arab disco and house music.. also video games like Bloodborne, Disco Elysium, Mass Effect, Deus Ex and anime like Made in Abyss, Serial experiments Lain, Kino’s Journey, Dorohedoro, Genius Party… as far as films something recent I watched that I’m so enamored by is Scavengers Reign. There’s also The Event (short animation), Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Handmaiden, The Shape of Water….. I also really love cartoons like Amphibia, Infinity Train and Summer Camp Island… Honestly the well of admiration is vast

EIP: Tell us about your cultural heritage and ancestry, where does it show up in your work and daily practices?

SANYU: Most of my family is from Haiti. My mother and father are both from Haiti. Although I was raised catholic I always felt resistant to the imagery and suffocated by the religious dogma. I definitely feel like my Haitian ancestry has some deeply spiritual implications and reverberations. I think it shows up in the ways I shape my spiritual practice without restriction. I take meditative baths and keep an alter. I also like to put positive incantations or affirmations into tattoos (with consent). I do rituals and journal.

I’ve been asking myself how to speak on my political views without my thoughts seeming convoluted or confusing but I now realize I just have to speak as I am. The political climate is precarious and confusing and so I think my thoughts reflect that reality. I notice more and more that history is a culmination of progressions and regressions. I know where my moral compass lies and so I’m spending some time understanding the context of all this degenerative backsliding that’s happening.

I have insomnia and so for a few nights past I was up until about 4am doing historical analysis and learning about the situation in Syria, researching things like Ba’athism, the Alawites, the resistance… I was looking into France, Britain, Egypt, president Nasser and the Suez Canal. I learned some Palestinian history and Haitian history. I even went so far as the year 622 learning about the ancient city of Yathrib and even further into some Roman Emperor named Hadrian. And this past Haitian Independence Day I did research on Haiti’s history as the first black-led republic to free itself from enslavement and thinking about the fact that they’re still suffering for that.

I’ve been thinking a lot about ambivalence and attempting an ambivalent approach to the way I understand the complex political dynamics of the world and history. A pattern I notice amidst some of the convolution is that a lot of deeply complex issues have historically cyclical behaviors. So many political pains of the present have such old seeds. I’m not sure if an ambivalent approach is best because I ask myself if in some ways it indirectly furthers the status quo.The status quo being something that marginalized people are forced to evolve quickly from and to stay ahead of because they’re unable to really exist within it peacefully.

How does progress become sustainable without cyclical history marring it back to violence? I think some deeply intersectional and critical conversations are necessary. There needs to be systemic change that takes in to account intersectionality with things like accountability, forgiveness, redemption, race, class, age, gender, sex, sexuality, reparations, technology, biology, climate change…. Everything in tandem and everything overlapping and interdependent… it feels so heavy to talk about especially knowing I don’t have the jurisdiction or credentials to change anything on a higher level but I do have the ability to make changes even if on a smaller scale. Even by existing within the intersections that I exist in. Black, woman, lesbian, artist.

Something I’ve been saying to myself is “insistence on my existence is an act of resistance”… even in my day-to-day choices. My spiritual practice, what I read, how I dress, products I buy, the music I listen to, my choice to sing to my plants and hug random trees and my choice to love and date a black woman and uplift black women any chance I get. I believe every day is an opportunity to make a conscious effort. I also believe that it is enough for me to simply exist and every day is an opportunity for me to find rest. My rest is radical too.