ARTISTS TO KNOW: SHURMMI
SHURMMI
Shurmmi is a Bangladeshi Muslim artist and high school teacher based in NYC. Inspired by traditional Islamic art, anime, and childhood trips to Bangladesh, Shurmmi’s work is a unique blend of rich history and contemporary art styles. Shurmmi inspires artists of color to confidently embrace their culture and defy conformity.
SHEER: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
SHURMMI: Hello! I’m Shurmmi a New York City born Bangladeshi Muslim artist! I’ve been in NYC my whole life, going back to visit Bangladesh of course. I’m still here in Brooklyn as a full time High School Art teacher. I was a freelancer for awhile, but it wasn’t for me so I became a teacher. I mainly teach sewing right now to my students but still teach drawing, painting, and creative writing for comics. It’s awesome because I get to share all the things I love! In addition to this, I write and illustrate comics. It’d be a dream to be published one day! I just finished my second comic which is a short story on webtoons titled, “Black Bird Dreams”.
SHEER: What are the main themes and subjects of your work?
SHURMMI: Representation started off being the key theme in my work. As simple as it sounds, just seeing fellow South Asian/ Bengali characters had a bigger impact than I expected. Now it’s more than that. I feel like it’s not enough to just draw pretty portraits of brown skinned ladies in heavy South Asian jewelry- yes that’s nice and fun, but I asked myself “so what else?’ Now it’s about telling stories, both reality and fantasy. And for me personally, telling stories for my fellow Bangladeshis.
SHEER: How have your life experiences influenced your aesthetic style?
SHURMMI: I’ve been drawing for a long time and been fortunate to see a lot of different styles. When I was a kid and learning to read Arabic, I loved the intricate details on every page of the books! Islamic art was one of my first influences, I was amazed at the beauty they captured without ever even showing a face or a body. Also those books for little kids to learn how to read Bengali had beautiful illustrations. The shades of green from Bangladesh, the details in craftsmanship- from cultural clothing, to jewelry to architecture. I will forever love 90’s cartoon styles, they're the best in my opinion! I was fortunate to go to art school and that experience definitely exposed me to art that I never would’ve found, or ever thought of looking up! Most of my art experience in college wasn’t illustration related, I was looking at contemporary art, y’know the kind most people find weird and it definitely influenced me. It helped me understand how artists think, and even if I don’t necessarily like that art, I definitely appreciate it!
SHEER: What drew you to illustration as your primary choice of expression?
SHURMMI: Cartoons! I will always love and watch them haha! I started in animation but moved toward illustration and comics, reading lots of manga as I got older. I loved that with illustration, one image could speak volumes and tell you an entire story.
SHEER: How do you capture elements of Bangladeshi culture in your illustrations?
SHURMMI: When I first started it was about skin color mainly. The dark tones we seldom saw. Then it was cultural garments, the ones many us didn’t want to wear as kids because we didn’t want to be teased at school. And now I’m revisiting old memories of Bangladesh itself. For the short story comic I just finished, it was heavily based on my memories of my dad’s village in Bangladesh, mixed with some fantasy elements. Whenever we went to visit it was the rainy season, so one day you could walk to where you needed to go, the next day you’d need a boat to travel because of all of the water that came in. I remember riding in the boats, going past trees submerged in water- this memory inspired the setting for my story. I plan to take this a step further in my future projects by incorporating more stories of Bangladeshis.
SHEER: Who are some artists you admire and have influenced your work or process?
SHURMMI: This is a tough one because there are a lot! I would have to say the collective artists who work together to create the cartoons and comics I love are the ones that influenced my work. Definitely Studio Ghibli is the main one, both in art and story. I’ve begun studying their backgrounds which helped me recently, because like many artists, I’m used to just drawing characters with very little attention to backgrounds. I was even watching good old fashion Pokemon from the 90s again and that influenced my new comic a lot! My siblings and I had notebooks where we tried to draw all 150 pokemon. Hiromu Arakawa the creator of FullMetal Alchemist is another author/artist. I love that story so much and aspire to something as powerful one day.
SHEER: What advice would you share with artists of color to keep us grounded throughout the creative process?
SHURMMI: If you constantly follow others you’ll always be behind. As an artist of color you have stories that haven’t been explored yet, so tell them. Branch out and experiment. Who cares what’s trending. Make the art YOU need to make and you’ll enjoy the process. If you just try to make art that will get the most likes, you’ll eventually get tired of playing that game. The great thing about being an artist is, once you make art, it exists. It will be there for others to see when it’s their time to see it.
SHEER: How would you like your art to be remembered?
SHURMMI: When I was a teenager, my goal was to develop a signature illustrative style that would be associated with Bangladeshi comics- it’s a goal I’m still working on, but hope to get there soon. Just like how you can look at manga and know it’s from Japan, or look at a superhero and know it’s an American comic. I want Bangladesh to have that. In an effort to modernize many people from different cultures, forget their roots. I would like my art to inspire people to hold onto their history.
