Navigating the landscape of hyphenated identity
This week we welcome Javaid Nayyar, a self-taught Pakistani-American artist born in Queens, whose creative journey draws inspiration from a diverse array of sources. Influenced by Islamic art, pop culture and subcultures like punk rock, hip-hop and skateboarding, as well as historical and political narratives, his work reflects a fusion of Eastern and Western, modern and classic, all filtered through his unique perspective.
Through his art, Javaid explores themes of identity, xenophobia, Islamophobia, life in the South Asian diaspora and the immigrant/first-generation American experience. He conveys these themes by employing mixed media collage, paint and traditional Pakistani mirror work.
Nayyar is a 2024 MacDowell Fellow. He is a 2025 and 2024 D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellow, which followed grants awarded by the Commission in 2020, 2021 and 2022. He was an artist in residence at the Selina Hotel (Washington, D.C.) and has had solo exhibitions at the Selina Hotel and at the Homme Gallery there. His work has been exhibited in group shows in New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and Alexandria, Va. A graduate of Queens College and the Cardozo School of Law in New York, Nayyar brings a rich interdisciplinary perspective to his artistic practice.
Nayyar says: “Pakistani-American. It’s my designation, my identity, my classification. It also sounds like a contradiction. For those of us born in the USA but tied to a culture of our immigrant parents from a foreign land, we live a contradiction. In this balancing act for first-generation immigrant kids in the diaspora, different influences take hold, some with a stronger pull than others. For me it was skateboarding, punk rock and hip-hop that grabbed me at an early age and taught me to question what I was being taught, from both the American and Pakistani/Muslim cultures.
“My work explores themes of identity, Islamophobia, colonialism and its lingering impact, life in the South Asian diaspora and the immigrant experience. I use acrylic paint, mixed media, painted Islamic tile patterns and small mirrors to convey these themes in my work. The mirrors I use are a reflection of the Pakistani tradition of mirror work and also allow the viewer to see themselves in the art.”
Nayyar’s work is included in Epicenter’s upcoming exhibition Music of Many Colours, opening Nov. 7 at The Local in Long Island City.
