Interview: Nia King, “Bodies on the Line”Posted in Articles, Arts, Gay & Lesbian, Interviews, Media Archive, Women on 2013-04-29 01:14Z by Steven |
Interview: Nia King, “Bodies on the Line”
Mixed Reader: A blog of mixed race literature
2013-04-27
Nia King is multimedia producer with a passion for social justice. She started out as a zinester writing about mixed-race identity, made a short film about searching for trans-friendly housing in the Bay Area, and has recently transitioned into journalism. Her ongoing projects include a web comic about her interracial relationship, and a podcast about queer and trans art activists of color. Feminist textile artist Tali Weinberg, an MFA student at California College of Art, recently interviewed Nia for part of her thesis on women art activists in the Bay Area. Below is an abridged transcript of the interview.
Do you consider yourself part of a certain activist or artistic lineage?
As a queer, mixed-race woman of color who’s an ex-punk and an ex-anarchist I feel like there’s lots of different things that I draw from, some of which have nothing to do with my identity. Jaime Hernandez is definitely my biggest influence in terms of my comics. He and his brother do a series of comics called Love and Rockets. His branch of the Love and Rockets franchise is about these two young queer punk rockers growing up outside LA, I think one of them is Chicana and the other is Colombian and Scottish. For me as a young punk growing up in a white scene, seeing queer women of color represented in comics as actual people was a really amazing thing.
I also really love the visual art. Every panel looks like something you could put up on a wall, which is not something you see with all comics. There’s a really strong graphic style with a lot of solid black and white shapes that are really sort of distinct visually and that’s something I also really draw from…
Read the entire interview here.