Even as a young child in Lahore, Komail was made to feel different. Boys don’t pirouette off of the dining table. Boys don’t burst into songs from The Little Mermaid unprovoked. Boys don’t play together like that. It’s dangerous. Starved of a crucial part of himself, he ate. And ate. Before long, his own body became another burden to carry everywhere and to hide. As a promising young artist, he dreamed that through his work he might one day find fulfillment in the outstretched (ideally muscular) arms of America. Instead, arriving in the self-proclaimed land of tolerance, Komail finds himself at turns denied or fetishized for the color of his skin and scrutinized due to the color of his passport. And as if that weren’t enough, his art is seen through a cultural lens that only evaluates that which is not white in relation to that which is. Searching for his place somewhere between these two worlds means navigating a minefield of expectations, assumptions and self-doubt. Komail discovers, sometimes painfully, there are people (and even parts of himself) he’ll need to let go of to move forward, because it’s sometimes the people closest to you in life who trip you up. But then there are also those who get you through.
