Josama Madera is a Brooklyn-based artist who paints murals and urban scenes in oil. He often incorporates pop culture icons pulled from television shows that were part of his childhood growing up in 1980’s New York. The last time we saw the Dominican artist, he was scribbling away and drawing in a black book while waiting to be called on set for a photo shoot. This was in the early 2000’s when he was still modeling, couch surfing, and thinking about being an MC in New York.
Josama’s life back then was like a gypsy’s and mirrored the stories you’d hear from old New Yorkers who would wake up one day and decide to become anything they wanted — including famous. It helped that he was good looking, easy going and possessed an open attitude about what he wanted from the world. As a subject, he was a photographer’s dream because he was very easy to work with, especially when a pretty girl was involved.
After years of castings, travel and editorial work, Josama said so long to the fashion world and headed to the Dominican Republic where he enrolled in art school. After two years of extensive and intensive study, he made his way back to NYC.
We reconnected with him last month and talked about his new life as an oil painter. Here’s some of what was said.
GlobalGrind: Tell us what your artist name is.
Josama is my artist name. My Government name is actually Joseph David — I got two first names.
Where did you get Josama from?
Back in ‘96, Osama Bin Laden was on the news for, I think, blowing up the U.S. Embassy in South Africa and me and friend were watching the news. My boy was like, ‘Yo it looks like your pops!’ I’ve been an MC since I was a little kid. I always wrote rhymes and I was thinking of a name at the time. At the time you had dudes naming themselves after crazy dudes so I thought of Josama. I put the two together but next thing I know, it just became something else! My mom calls me Josama! That’s how it came up.
Was this at the same time you were modeling or before?
This was years before, in high school.
Where were you living at the time?
I was living out on Long Island at the time because, around ’93, my mother moved me out to Long Island with my cousin and my aunt just to get us out of the city, to get us out of trouble. But then we ended up getting into a lot more trouble out there!
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I met you in the late ‘90s, early 2000’s we had a friend in common, Bob Myers. I think Bob photographed you first and then I photographed you a couple years later for Honey magazine. What agency where you with at the time?
I think I was in either Metropolitan or Request. I think Metropolitan became Request.
How long where you modeling?
I would say like five years: ’99 to ’04 or ’05.
You were modeling and you wanted to be an MC at the same time also?
Yeah, I’ve been wanting to do music.
And then you were also drawing. I remember you drawing during our shoots.
I was always drawing in my black book. Since 1989-1990. I was always drawing, keeping a black book or writing rhymes in a notebook.
So from drawing…
I never thought I would take it as a career you know.
How did you make the jump? What made you decide to go to Dominican Republic and go to art school?
All those years I spent modeling I was basically homeless. I was couch surfing on peoples couches not knowing what I was going to do with my life. So, around that time, I was like, ‘Lemme go down there.’ As far as music, I was kind of disheartened by the whole industry and the way it was going. I had to ask myself, ‘Do I want to dedicate my life to this?’ Because I love the fun of making music, not the whole business aspect of it, so I was like, ‘Let me put that on the back burner.’ I have almost a 1,000 songs recorded with my boy. My boy is actually working with French Montana and people like that now. I went to DR and my mom, she’s an artist too; and she was an artist in residence at a school called Altos de Chavon which is a sister’s school to Parsons. So I checked it out and it was paradise! If I’m going to go study design or art, this is the place to do it. So I did that for two years.
When you were in DR did you stay with relatives? Or did you have your own place?
I stayed with my mom. She lives in a poor fisherman’s village in Nagua, which is on the North Coast.
Above: “Bear Trap”, Oil & Acrylic on Wood.
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Your mom is well known?
She’s not well known but she’s done her thing in the art world.
You stayed with her for two years?
I stayed with her for a few months, actually. I was probably in DR for almost two and a half, almost three years. I stayed with her for a few months and then I ended up watching her crib down there for a few months because she was traveling. That was a cool experience because I got to live with nature: you live in nature, the house is open, there was no running water. I don’t think they were pumping water to the village for like a month so it was rain season, collecting water and taking showers outside that type of thing. But then I ended up going to school that following year for two years and then I was just living on campus.
What type of work did you show during the application process?
I showed them stuff out of my black book! I just put together collages and things like that. I had to do more academic stuff which I hadn’t done before, things like still life drawing and figure drawing and stuff like that. I put some drawings together and I was like, ‘Oh, damn! I can draw draw!’ I was always intimidated by brushes and paint and I never thought I’d be a painter but I just jumped right into it when I was at school and I excelled at it.
On your website and on your Facebook pages I saw some samples of your paintings and a lot of them reference 1980’s cartoon characters. I can remember there’s a painting of two figures outside of bodega and I think one of them was a Decepticon. I think Megatron was shooting at somebody.
That was “Laser Tag”. And there’s another one with Destro in front of the bodega and there’s “Tron”. Tron actually set it off for me because I was a huge “Tron” fan as a kid.
The original?
Yeah, the original. My first memory of a toy is Tron. When we had to start thinking about our Thesis at school, I already knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to do something along the lines of Pop Art and all of that but I didn’t know what. Then I started brainstorming these scenarios that would be cool, thinking, ‘Alright: what would it be like if these two characters interacted on the street corner?’ I wanted to see that so I started playing around with it.
Above: “Alfa Male”, Oil & Acrylic.
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I looked at the work as if they were metaphors. Because you know in our community, we’re always at the Bodega, at the corner street and shit pops off.
Yeah, it’s definitely a metaphor for all of that. And it has to do with the way that popular culture raises us, generation after generation. Probably for the past 100 years, since the movie business has been in effect. People have been buying magazines, what we see on TV, cartoons, everything affects us. And it bugs me out how much subliminal stuff is in cartoons. I know there’s a lot of greedy people behind it because they’re all artists.
So when you’re making work like that do you ever think about your own past as a model? You’re critiquing this stuff now but earlier in your life you were a part of it by being a figure in someone’s campaign or photo shoot.
I don’t know if I’m giving a negative critique; but I was apart of the industry for years. It was fun! I would never take it back! It was cool times, doing shows and photo shoots. It was interesting, so to speak, because everything is almost like a front in the game. It was bugged out because I was in the game for like five years and, I guess, being in the middle, being Latino, it was harder to get jobs. I saw people coming in the game doing huge campaigns and blowing up when I was still there doing editorials and things like that. That’s why I stayed in the game for a minute because I wanted to see if it paid off. Then I just lost interest after a while.
Your murals and your paintings are very different. The murals I saw were more about nature and landscapes.
Yeah because those were commissions.
I wasn’t sure if they were commissions or not. I just thought that they were two different things in terms of how you painted the figure.
A lot of my paintings are urbanist.
Yeah, they’re urbanist; but I feel like they’re very tight whereas your murals are very loose, more expansive.
I feel like that’s just all a matter of space. I work more comfortably big. I’ve even noticed that a small painting will take me twice the time to do a huge mural. Murals give me room to work.
Above: “Hoppen Turnstyles”, Oil & Acrylic.
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You only work with oil for your paintings?
I start them off with acrylic and top them with oil — I mix them up.
What are you working on now?
I’ve been working on the same concept but I’m starting to introduce nature into my urbanist painting. I got this one piece that’s a beautiful waterfall scenery but then there are holes all over the ground because I kind of like super imposed two photos I found together to make that. The holes represent a nuclear stock pile facility where they stash nuclear weapons and I just made it into nature. I got the guys in the radiation suits walking around but there’s no pop references though.
Is this the first time you’ve done a painting without a pop reference?
No, I’ve done a few before. But since I’ve really started painting I’ve tried to … I figured since I’m putting in the time painting I should focus on the mission at hand because I feel like I have to do it. I don’t know why. People are always saying, ‘You know you can make money doing landscapes and portraits and stuff if you just do that all the time’ but then I wouldn’t even want to paint.
Where do you paint? Do you have a studio?
I’ve been painting at home. Studio will come in time. I definitely need to get a studio or studio space because it’s confining painting at home. I want to make a mess and I can’t! (laughs) I can’t make a mess.
A lot of artists come from an academic route and then they go into this direction where they feel they have to get into residencies. They apply for all types of grants and stuff like that. Have you done that?
I haven’t applied for any grants but I’ve applied for a few residencies. I just haven’t heard nothing back and I need to get more on my grind as far as that! I definitely need to get more on my grind (laughs).
Above: “Playen Dirty”, Oil & Acrylic
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It’s a whole ‘nother world. I’ve talked to artists and that’s how some of them make their money.
They go from residency to residency.
Are you involved with any artist communities?
No, I have a few artist friends in Brooklyn and everybody knows each other but I haven’t been apart of an art community like that.
I know Uptown has so much happening, like skateboarding, Washington Heights, The Peralta Projects. You know him, Tony Peralta?
Yeah.
That’s that dude right there: man he has Uptown on lock!
Word?
He’s got a show coming up I think, in July.
See that was my life! When I was a kid, like from 6 years old until like 13, 12, I was skating everyday. I used to skate with Harold Hunter. Harold’s my homie, all those dudes were.
Do you miss the modeling world?
Not really. What I miss is meeting people and doing jobs and the behind the scene type stuff. Llike doing runway shows or little editorials or meeting different people. That was the best part about it for me. As far as casting and all that? I don’t think so! (laughs). That’s like another dimension of it out there. You know like ‘alright’. It was interesting.
What other artists are you looking at? Who are you excited by right now?
I like a lot of the old classic work, like a lot of artists who are dead. I like a lot of street artists like Banksy, of course. Doze Green. I think Doze’ work is amazing! There’s a lot of dudes but a good friend of mine, Noxer, he’s known in the street, in the graff world. He’s not known in the art world. But I gotta definitely culture myself more and make myself go out more. I see inspiring things everyday! The last few openings that I went to, I was just like ‘ummm okay’ maybe that’s just my own thing from childhood because my mom used to take me to openings when I was a child. I think that’s what turned me off from the art world. When I was a child, a lot of the stuff that I saw wasn’t exciting. There were things here and there that were really, really exciting but, for the most part, it was super bureaucratic. I guess once you make a name for yourself you can do whatever you want. But that’s one of the reasons I got really, really into painting because I wanted to see, I guess, my own imagination come into play or light. Playing with toys as a kid and playing with paint.
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It must have been incredible when you made your first painting, when you completed your first piece. You must have been really surprised at yourself.
Actually, there’s no iconic characters in the first one. I should show it to you. I’ll show it to you on the internet later. I have a stake of paintings that aren’t even finished that I’m like ‘I’ll finish them one day’. I figured if I have a huge show coming up in the next few months and I have two months notice I’ll knock them out in two weeks.
So you’re one of those painters, you paint on a deadline.
Yeah, I’m pretty good with that. I always paint but I don’t go in as if I had a deadline. I might do three hours here, a half hour there. That was the one thing cool about school: you have all the time in the world to paint! (laughs) That’s all you’re doing. Out in the real world, it’s the grind, the day to day grind.
And did you start incorporating those pop icon figures while you were at school?
No, it all happened at school. A large percentage of my pieces that you seen on my site, I did while I was at school.
And what was the Dominican response to that? Did they get it? Or were they only interested in technique and subject?
The teacher definitely got it, the administration and the teachers I had mad props. As far as students, some of them got it because they were international kids. The kids that were from poor backgrounds were trying to get it. They didn’t even know what they wanted to do for their thesis; they were just doing portraits and they couldn’t come up with a concept.
How was your work received and critiqued?
I got critiques but my critiques had nothing to do with concepts. It was always about technique. It was like, ‘You could do this or you could do that’ and I use to take people’s advice, sometimes, or mix it in somehow. That’s what school is about: technique, technique, technique. My first year in the basic year, the teachers told me that I already had my style. They said, ‘You already know what you want to do’ and I have lived a full life already because most kids were like 19 or 20 years old. I was going to school when I was 30. So people were like, ‘What are you doing here?’
How old are you now?
I’m 32. I’m getting up there! (laughs)
So what’s in the cards for you are you working on any shows?
Right now I’m not working on any shows I’m just trying to network and trying to put together a little work here and there and get work just period.
Above: “Holden Dwn Da Block”, Oil & Acrylic.
