Joaquin Golez Makes Accessible Art Brimming with Queer Hope

Joaquin Golez (MFA ’24) is an illustrator whose work captures the eroticism of hope for queer and transgender people existing in a hostile world. He takes inspiration from manga, tattoos, queer culture and social justice movements to create art that is detailed, vibrant and provocative. Ruben Gil-Herrera from Inside Portland State sat down with Golez to talk about his journey to and through PSU, and discuss his inspirations, artistic mission and goals. 

RG: What drew you to PSU’s MFA program?

JG: When I applied for the MFA program, I had been working freelance illustration off and on and not loving it. So I took a break during the pandemic and I said to myself, I’m just going to be a regular guy. I am just going to get a job at a grocery store. I’m just going to do art on the side. 

But it was hard not to want to be drawing all of the time, and I wanted to go to graduate school because I was also really interested in teaching. My parents are both teachers and I saw them having these really fulfilling, sustained personal practices that were refilled by their engagement with students. And I was looking at graduate programs and I saw that I could go here. It just felt right.

RG: You mentioned you were not able to make the kind of art that you love to make. What kind of art do you love to make?

JG: My intro into art has been through comics, through animation, through beautiful packaging even because that’s kind of what I could get my hands on. That’s what was accessible to me. I think a lot of art to people often feels really like the conceptual aspect is the driving force and more important than what visually is being engaged with initially. I’m actually really drawn to visual first. I think that’s part of what kind of art I make. It’s a big force. It’s aesthetically driven. It’s queer. It’s usually pretty raunchy. It’s a little subversive. 

RG: Yeah, your work is cool. How would you describe the themes? 

JG: I usually say illustrative. It might be figurative. I would also say that it’s erotic. I think, yes, in a sexual way, but also in…I think bell hooks is someone who writes really beautifully about eroticism beyond just sexuality and in terms of what is in the spaces that we don’t know, what’s in the shadows, what’s the potency of somewhere that’s imagined and that maybe is a little precarious and charged.

We don’t know if it’s pleasure or threat there, and then what’s the power of that and how can we use that for something that works for us? Even in social justice organizing and stuff, I think eroticism is a really cool lens and perspective when we kind of have a lot of hard conversations or we have diversity, which means we have lots of different perspectives in one room that we’re navigating. Eroticism is interesting to me because it’s like, okay, where’s the potential of what kind of scares us or where there’s a lot of charge? 

RW: When I look at your work, yes, there’s suggested nudity and sexuality, but there’s also this longing that I caught. Could you elaborate on the queer elements of your work? 

JW: My brand of queerness, which to me is inherently erotic and also connected to intentional strangeness, exists in opposition to a norm. So for me, as a person who’s trans, as a person who’s mixed race, as a person who identifies as neurodivergent, if I’m sort of subversive with it, then I’m queer. I’m queering something, I’m taking something. We know a norm and I’m queering it. 

RG: How do you make your own art accessible?

JG: [I focus] on how I can make something that is visually compelling or even sometimes maybe visually familiar. I’m really interested in archetypes and symbols, and I think that’s a really big aspect of illustration too. It’s a part of graphic design. It’s a part of a lot of conversations around illustration. How can we use things that are in a predominant or shared cultural lexicon and how can we use them to engage people and have conversations about something new or something preexisting? [And] how can we use the tools that people kind of already know? 

RG: How did you personally get over that hurdle of accessibility for an MFA program, which can be selective, and can be inaccessible to some people?

JW: When I first applied to the MFA program, I felt super intimidated. I felt like it was maybe a little bit over my head or that I was afraid of not belonging. I was concerned that it was inaccessible to me, even though I’d applied and gotten in. And the art I make is illustration. I am drawing anime. I’m drawing dirty pictures. I’m drawing tattoos. So I felt like, in conversation with my perception of contemporary art, I was concerned that someone would find out that I didn’t belong or that it was inaccessible to me.

I would come up against things where I was like, wow, I feel like I am not speaking correctly, or having the right bigger words, or I feel like someone’s going to find out that I’m too kind of grimy for this or something. And so I think feeling comfortable no matter how people are or what I think the way people are perceiving me and just being like, this is who I am and I’m here to learn and to understand other people, and I’m just myself and I have good intentions. Just accepting myself helped with that. 

RG: I noticed that your illustrations are not colored in for the most part. Is that an aesthetic you found before Portland State or during your time here?

JG: Before I started the graduate program, I was making super colorful paintings. They were, from a technical standpoint, too colorful. They were hard to look at because the more information you put visually into something, the harder it is to read quickly or easily. I was wearing all my jewelry at once, as my great grandma would say. I was kind of using all of my skills at once and I was making these really big, mostly digital paintings and printing them really huge. 

I came in [to PSU] with this maximalist approach that is still a big part of me, but I learned how to be more specific and be tighter and be clearer, which was something that I was really seeking coming in from a technical standpoint. I really got that from the program here at Portland State, not even just things I learned in class necessarily, but just the connections I made here, the conversations I had, the experiences.

RG: Is there a professor who stood out as a mentor during your time at PSU?

JG: There have been several amazing mentors that I’ve connected with in the graduate program here, [like] Terra Eppa. I’m obsessed with her. She is amazing and so talented. Also, her background is actually illustrations so she really understands my investment technically and conceptually in that kind of world. I just love her energy. She gives me great feedback, but also is always encouraging me and really bringing me up as a person. Tabitha Nikolai was the first director of my MFA program, and she was huge for me. She was giving me books that were changing my life. She was sending me into directions toward media and points of research that were completely blowing my mind. [Also] Steven Brown, he runs the gallery, Helen’s Costume, and also teaches here, and I was kind of like a TA proctor for his figure drawing class for two years. He also taught me a lot about teaching. Shea Merck, who teaches in social practice and does a lot of graphic novel and comic stuff around town, is still an amazing mentor in terms of teaching and illustration in comics. I’m still working with them with their new project Crucial Comics, which is like a publishing house for cartoonists. 

RG:  What advice would you give to students who are graduating from their bachelor’s and pursuing an MFA or want to pursue art as an undergrad degree? 

JW: Being an artist is the most beautiful thing ever. It’s why I do it. I just think it’s incredible. Many vocations lend to this but, to me, art is we’re driven to offer something else than the obvious. We’re driven to ask questions. We’re driven to both look inward and outward at the same time, and then turn it into something to share. I think making art is the most beautiful thing a person can do. 

I also think that, as a job, it’s very hard. There’s no straight and narrow path for it. It can look a lot of different ways. That being said, success looks a lot of different ways. There’s a lot of exterior information about what is and isn’t success. And I think if we can find places where we feel successful, where we feel good, where we feel sustained, that’s what matters. 

RG: Is there anything we didn’t cover yet that you want to talk about?

JW: As much as you can, get yourself out there and talk to other creative people and make connections and engage and be seen and see other people’s work and be creatively engaged. And however you do that, whether that’s school or tabling or showing your work is all really great, but I think sometimes people think, oh, if I invest everything I have financially into this, it’s going to give back to me equally. But I think being discerning about how you can sustain yourself is really important. 

Learn more about Joaquin Golez, and view his work, at Other_Eros.

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