New York's First Lady Stays True to Herself As Artist-in-Residence in Portugal
- @ Cynthia Adina Kirkwood
- 6 hours ago
- 9 min read
Rama Duwaji is in her studio. Some of the cardboard boxes, which Duwaji used to move into the mayor's residence at Gracie Mansion, became canvases for her drawings, reported Hyperallergic. (Photo by Dahlia Dandashi)
What is compelling about Rama Duwaji, an American illustrator, animator and ceramicist, is her openness to experimenting with different media, often based on their portability, (drawing on the subway), because what she is expressing is what matters most.
Duwaji is a New York-based artist with Syrian roots whose work often expresses political themes, reminding one of the Egyptian artist, Gazbia Sirry (1925-2021), whose work also was her reaction to social changes and crises, Sirry told Mariam Hamdy in The Female Pharaoh (July 2011). Duwaji's work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Vice and London's Tate Modern museum, reported BBC (November 6, 2025).
"Fine arts always felt like something that requires a studio, expensive tools, permission," she told Hyperallergic (April 15). "Illustration was something I could practice in the margins of my notebooks or on the subway. My take is that there is no real difference between illustration and fine art. An oil pastel drawing for a children's book is no less of a drawing than an oil pastel piece in a frame hung in a gallery. It's just marketed differently."
Duwaji, 29, helped finalize the brand identity of the successful New York mayoral campaign of her husband of 19 months, Zohran Kwame Mamdani, 34, who took office in January, reported CNN (November 2, 2025).
She worked on the final version of the campaign's iconography and font, which showcased a distinct blend of colors easily identifiable to New Yorkers: subway Metrocard orange-yellow, New York baseball team Mets blue for shadow drops and backgrounds, and splashes of firehouse red. The font calls back to a time of bold-yellow bodega signs calling out to customers.
As an artist-in-residence, Rama Duwaji reportedly will be attending a five-night women's retreat, focusing on calligraphy, in Arcos de Valdevez Municipality, Viana do Castelo District, in the tranquil northern Portuguese countryside, later this month, according to the New York Post (August 29). Duwaji has neither confirmed nor denied the report.
"My focus isn't on being a public figure but on continuing my work with care and responsibility and allowing my art to speak for itself," she told Hyperallergic.
"In the meantime, I've been really drawn to other accessible (and affordable) media I have lying around, whether it's printmaking using to-go container tops, or ink drawing on flattened cardboard moving boxes, or carving and drawing onto scraps of wood picked up at an artist estate sale, or large-scale black-and-white oil pastel drawings on a secondhand roll of paper, or sculpting with leftover clay with no rush to fire any of it.
"I am excited about being experimental and seeing how my work translates in different media and finding what lessons I learn from repetition."
Self-portrait (by Rama Duwaji)
The Women Sanctuary website described the retreat: Journey Through Calligraphy: Embark on a journey of beauty and remembrance through the sacred art of Islamic calligraphy and the rich legacy of Islam in Portugal, nestled within one of the country's most breathtaking settings.
Rich Islamic Legacy
Five centuries of Islamic rule (8th through 13th centuries) left deep traces in the Portuguese language, architecture, agriculture and cuisine, which are listed in textbooks for primary school students in Year 5.
Adalberto Alves, a lawyer and jurist, by profession, and a poet and scholar, published a dictionary of 19,000 Portuguese words and expressions inspired by Arabic, reported Al Jazeera (June 10, 2020).
For example, the Portuguese expression, oxalá (pronounced oshallah), comes from the Arabic insha'Allah, both meaning "God willing". Also, many Portuguese words starting with "al-" come from Arabic because "al" is the Arabic definite article, meaning "the". Examples are alface (lettuce) from the Arabic al-khass; almofada (cushion) from the Arabic al-mukhaddah, and Algarve, the southern region of Portugal, from Al-Gharb, meaning "the West".
In 2008, UNESCO awarded Adalberto Alves, 87, the Shariah Prize for Arab Culture for his work in disseminating greater knowledge of Arab culture and art, according to Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (National Library of Portugal) (2020).
The Moors introduced or greatly expanded the cultivation of crops, such as rice, olives, sugar, oranges and lemons. They also advanced farming techniques, sometimes built on Roman foundations, such as the windmill, watermill (Portuguese azenha from the Arabic al-saniyah) and the water wheel (Portuguese nora from the Arabic na'urah).
They also brought glazed ceramic tile work and geometric mosaic traditions, azulejos, which comes from the Arabic al-zulayi, meaning polished stone.
Artwork (by Rama Duwaji)
Calligraphy: Making Words Beautiful
For centuries, writers around the world have made words beautiful, not only in their meaning but also in their physical representation on the page, according to Calligraphy: The Art of the Written Word (2022), Hadara. Arab culture has devoted so much care to calligraphy that it is a peer of other arts, such as painting and sculpture.
Scribes enjoyed high social status.
"It's why Islamic calligraphy was so prominent -- the competition to reach the most beautiful form of elegance," said Basma al Hamdy, associate professor of graphic design at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar, Doha, and author of Khatt: Egypt's Calligraphic Landscape."
Mohamed Zakariya designed United States postage stamps celebrating the two most important festivals -- or eids -- in the Islamic calendar: Eid al-Fitr (Festival of Breaking the Fast) and Eid al-Adha (Festival of Sacrifice), according to his website. This stamp reads Eid mubarak (literally, "blessed festival"). Arabic is read and written from the right to the left.
Mohamed Zakariya (b. 1942), a master calligrapher in Arlington, Virginia, grinds his own gold, which he uses to paint, makes his own paper with egg whites and alum, and creates his own ebru (marbling) for the borders.
"When you write, it's a form of ibadah (act of devotion), not just because you're copying the great Qur'an but because you have an intention involved" of turning the physical mastery of the reed pen into a spiritual exercise.
He recalled, on his website, the words of the prominent scholar, intellectual and expert in Islamic art, Mahmud Yazir (1895-1952):
"The line must have a breath-like flow."
Zakariya recognized these words as the goal of calligraphers: to inspire "awe in the text, almost as if transposed to a clearer state of perception. Such a work never tires the viewer: the more you look at it, the more you see in it."
UNESCO added Arabic calligraphy to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list on December 14, 2021, according to its website. Sixteen countries (Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen) submitted the nomination.
"The fluidity of Arabic script offers infinite possibilities, even within a single word, as letters can be stretched and transformed in numerous ways to create different motifs."
Sisterhood
The Women Sanctuary retreat -- "led by women, created by women and devoted to women" -- invites women of "various faiths or those who choose a non-religious path. Our only request is that participants bring an open heart and a deep respect for the spiritual nature of the retreat".
In its April interview with Rama Duwaji, who is Muslim, Hyperallergic asked:
"You also mention sisterhood as a theme in your work. Can you share more about that?"
"It would have been impossible to have done the last year of my life without my girls. Sisterhood and platonic love in my friendships are so essential to my life and as my art reflects so much of my life, it's the most natural step that female friendships are centered in my work. It's an ode to the specificity and power of these friendships as I experience them and a reflection of what carries me forward and shapes the way I see the world."
From Razor Burn (by Rama Duwaji)
The first lady and her work caused a sensation on the cover and inside of a special issue of The Cut (February 17). Readers gushed over her on the New York magazine's Instagram as "the ode to 40s chic", "the New York City cool girl", "so surrealistic Audrey Hepburn", "she's so cool, wow", "incredible" and "that Middle Eastern elegance".
"Timeless glamour. Rama Duwaji shows how elegance lives in restraint and authenticity. She could teach a generation that elegance isn't manufactured."
"If I had this as a cover to look at as a teen, I would have been prouder of my ethnic features. I know. Sad to say. But I am proud to see this now. It's never to late. Beautiful."
"The icon" also has wrestled with identity, misogyny and beauty standards through her art, reported Shado (May 24, 2019).
"I hope my illustrations make women of color send them to their friends and say, 'Hey, cute, she has the same nose as you' or 'Look, it's us'."
In 2018, Duwaji created Razor Burn, a 32-page graphic novel, with no words so that language would not be a barrier, about a teenage girl, who is "insecure about things like her arm hair, her nose and acne, and her journey of trying to accept herself for who she is".
Razor Burn was based on the illustrator's own experiences and those of many friends and family around her, according to Maamoul Press (July 27, 2018). It came about as an art class project about mental health, physical health and societal issues.
"I decided to make an accessible graphic novel for young teens of color about the pressure of Western beauty standards and the prevalence of mental health issues, such as body dysmorphia, anxiety and depression.
"Through the protagonist's struggles with her body/facial hair, foreign features and her experiences in a white-majority school, I wanted anyone reading it, who might have felt bizarre and alone struggling with body image or mental health, to realize that hundreds and thousands of women have gone through the exact same thing and came out thriving and confident despite it.
"When I started sharing some of the illustrations online, I had so many people approaching me, telling me that they had experienced the same thing, which emphasized to me that taboo issues in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region such as mental health needed to be talked about."
"Always, Lucian Freud"
Duwaji told Maamoul Press in July that there was an endless list of artists whom she admired but her top favorites, "at the moment", were Carson Ellis, illustrator of the Wildwood Chronicles and author; Rithika Merchant, visual artist; Betsy Walton, painter and illustrator; Ronan Bouroullec, designer of singular objects; Rachel Levit Ruiz, an artist and illustrator, and "always, Lucian Freud" (1922-2011), who is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists.
Animated BBC Shorts
Born in Houston, Texas, to Syrian parents, Rama Duwaji moved with her family to Dubai when she was nine, according to Público (November 6, 2025).
She briefly attended Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar before transferring to the university's Richmond campus to complete her degree, reported CNN (November 2, 2025). Later, she earned a master's degree in illustration as visual essay from the School of Visual Arts in New York.
In 2020, Rama Duwaji made two animated shorts for the BBC: Who Killed My Grandfather? and Virginity Testing, reported Lambiek Comiclopedia (March 19).
Who Killed My Grandfather? focused on the granddaughter of Yemen's 1974 Minister of Foreign Affairs, who tried to find out who murdered her grandfather half a century ago.
Virginity Testing was based on former Egyptian political prisoner Esra, who was subjected to forced virginity tests by her prison guards, despite the fact that, in 2011, virginity testing was outlawed in Egypt. With no scientific or clinical basis, these tests are carried out in at least 20 countries, according to the United Nations. Ironically, virginity testing becomes sexual assault.
'An Artist's Duty is to Reflect the Times'
"I'll always quote (the American singer, concert pianist and civil rights activist) Nina Simone: 'An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.'
"Art is inherently political in how it's made, funded and shared. Even creating art as a refuge from the horrors we see is political to me. It's a reaction to the world around us," she said to Yung (April 7, 2025).
"My relationship to art changes depending on the stages of my life and has varied depending on where I live. Right now, living in a turbulent New York City, I see art as an archival tool, as a way to hold memories, both personal and collective, in a way that words alone can't always do. It's been helpful for me as a tool to process what's happening around me in the world. It definitely feels like a way to create a home. It solidifies the walls around me that otherwise feel like they might crumble down."
I Grew Up in the Astoria Projects
In January, Rama Duwaji's husband, Zohran Kwame Mamdani, 34, took office, charged with youth, charisma and a progressive agenda, much like John Vliet Lindsay in 1965 at age 44. At the time, my Belizean parents, who were naturalized U.S. citizens, my brother and I were still living in Astoria, Queens, which was one of the neighborhoods Mamdani represented in the New York State Assembly from 2021 until his mayoralty. Now, for 14 years, I have been an immigrant in the Beiras countryside of central Portugal.
Married to Hizzoner
The artist told Hyperallergic:
"This experience has absolutely changed my life. I am still figuring out how it applies to me as an artist and as a person, both thinking of the future and the past. It has forced me to confront how much I've changed, even before this moment."
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