The Girls Bijou Karman Draws Don’t Ask for Anyone’s Approval

There’s a specific confidence that Bijou Karman draws into her figures—young women who look like they already know they’re the most interesting person in any given room, and are only half paying attention to you anyway. I keep coming back to that quality. It isn’t arrogance exactly. It’s prior knowledge.

Karman works out of Los Angeles and makes illustrations of women with bold, intentional line work and color that’s vivid without being aggressive. The figures are stylish, frankly beautiful, and they carry themselves like they’ve already won the argument that hasn’t happened yet. Rihanna noticed. Converse noticed. Elle and Harper’s Bazaar commissioned her. None of that surprises me—the work reads immediately at any scale, on a phone screen or a fashion page, and it leaves an impression.

Karman talks about her subjects in terms of resistance: Living in a society that constantly oppresses us has taught us to work twice as hard to earn the same respect as men, she’s said. We can express our emotions openly and freely and we’re not afraid to cry. We achieved all of this through our inner strength. The figures look exactly like that. Like the hard part already happened somewhere off-panel, and now they’re past it.

What draws me to artists who take femininity seriously as subject matter—not decoration, not backdrop, but actual subject matter with weight—is that there’s always more to find. Karman’s work keeps delivering that. And it looks good on a wall, which never hurts.