Artist and trans lady Jamie Diaz has been granted parole after serving almost 30 years of a life sentence in a Texas males’s jail. Whereas incarcerated, Diaz has made waves lately by way of her innumerable work and comics depicting the lived experiences and imagined realities of queer existence.
Diaz was born in 1958 exterior of Chicago to a Mexican-American household and grew up in Houston, Texas. As a toddler of the ’60s, Diaz recounts being left to her personal gadgets as a rule, discovering mischief together with her associates alone on the streets at evening. Her mom was very supportive and nurturing of her inventive expertise as a toddler, and accepted Diaz’s queerness as an adolescent. Diaz leaned additional into her artwork apply in adolescence and even had a quick stint as a tattoo artist.
The artist was sentenced to life in jail over drug possession and theft linked to her opiate dependancy within the mid-Nineteen Nineties, reportedly turning into eligible for parole by 2025 on the earliest.
Incarcerated as an out and proud queer and trans particular person in a Texas males’s jail, Diaz discovered refuge from the abuse and discrimination from different incarcerated individuals and correctional officers alike by diving headfirst into her artwork apply. Confined to the small pan of watercolors supplied on the jail commissary and paintbrushes made out of locks of hair, Diaz targeted on delicately rendered, surreal figuration exemplifying queer love and sweetness and sequential photos that navigated themes of ache and struggling. Her storytelling facilities queer universes with characters impressed by herself and the individuals in her life infused with crude humor and dry wit.
Diaz’s work lastly got here to gentle in 2013 when she linked with Gabriel Joffe, who volunteered on the time for the abolitionist group Black and Pink, connecting LGBTQ+ civilians with incarcerated individuals as pen friends throughout the nation. Diaz and Joffe developed a familial relationship over the last decade by way of letters, work, and telephone calls, additionally entwined by their very own medical transitions at far totally different levels of life throughout the timeline of their connection. As her connection to the surface, Joffe helped Diaz achieve consideration for her paintings by constructing her an internet site and performing as her consultant.
“I would like individuals to be ok with [seeing my art],” Diaz instructed Joffe throughout a collection of interviews in 2022. “Simply to know issues. To really feel love and understanding, simply to really feel some peace … I would like them to know that we’re good individuals.”
“Being queer, I’ve had such a tough time with it from different individuals, as a result of I understand how they really feel about us. Not everyone, however there’s nonetheless lots of people that hate us,” Diaz continued. “I simply need individuals to really feel good, really feel some happiness after they see my work.”
Diaz was sought out by New York seller Daniel Cooney in 2022 and had her first solo exhibition at his namesake gallery that 12 months whereas nonetheless behind bars. The eye on Diaz mounted, culminating in her first printed comedian guide, Queer Angels and Devils, in 2023 — solely additional stimulating her have to showcase the wonder and humor of queerness on a grander scale.
In early 2024, Diaz suffered from a significant stroke that impacted a few of her colleges, although she is enhancing slowly. Diaz was launched on parole on Might 31 and is targeted on reintegration and restoration concurrently — although she’s most desirous to return to large-scale oil portray on canvas, as Joffe talked about to Hyperallergic.
A extra intimate have a look at Joffe and Diaz’s relationship and her rise as an artist is accessible by way of Karla Murthy’s quick movie “Love, Jamie” (2023), which is now out there to stream on PBS beneath the American Masters collection.
