Mia Jose
Graphic novelist
I have long been interested in understanding cultural stories and myths through the lens of the places they are generated in, and how they orient social behaviour. I look forward to engaging with the ‘City of the Image’ through its local lore and cultural practitioners, and be influenced by it in the process. Given that this residency finds me at an interlude, I am excited to arrive with eyes, ears and a sketchbook open to new threads to begin pulling at.
It will also be a special thing to witness the French leg of the exhibition on Indian visual storytelling traditions, a project that was close to my heart during development. An additional perk is that Cité BD will also be hosting an exhibition on the history of queer comics, which speaks directly to me.
Mia Shay Jose is a visual artist and researcher who uses graphic narratives to probe questions of gender, inheritance and embodiment in cultural stories, informed by her lived experiences of transition: of body, culture and profession. Her creative practice approaches social systems both through the lens of a transgender body and that of a legal researcher, searching for a reconciliation of conflicted parts essential to the self. Over the last 2 years, this search has led to Negotiations, a comic travelogue charting the policing of non-binary bodies across public spaces, Regards Your Skin, an anthology around self-policing and motherhood, and a public mural with trans communities in Kerala. Her present projects include a comic navigating queerness in conflict with the complex religious landscape of Northern Kerala and a graphic adaptation of a Malayalam novel to be published by Westland Books, both rooted in South Indian folklore.
