When my friend Amy Lopez and I were discovering the possibilities of creating nude photography with mask art, I was introduced to Basqo Bim, a multi-faceted Colombian-American artist with a propensity for elaborate masks. I was intrigued by the adorned monster mask that resembled a walking altar—trimmed in braided cord, beaded with found treasure, a mane made of colorful tulle fabric, pearl teeth, and wire-sculpted whiskers. It felt like there was an ancient spirit behind these masks. I needed to capture it. I’ve been following Basqo Bim’s work for almost four years now, running into him at parades, sharing quick greetings, or catching his artwork in its full splendor at events around town. I’ve watched him share illustrations, create elaborate oversized monster masks, guide puppet parades, and I’ve eaten crab cakes under his second line umbrella at Jazz Fest. The first time I met Basqo was under the cypress trees in Fontainebleau State Park. We joined together that morning to create images that resonated with his character masks and I knew then that I was standing in front of someone born to share stories. I met Basqo on his front porch in the Bywater on a November morning and had a conversation about becoming an artist, leaving the corporate world, and being pushed to becoming a full-time artist when the film industry went on strike. He shared how his artwork has since been hung in community galleries and grown into art installations, as well as his dreams of writing children’s books and making videos.
I want to start with your name. Very simple, Basqo Bim. Who is that and what does it mean to you?
I don’t know if there’s a satisfying end to that story. I think of myself as an early internet user—I was online when it was like 1995, 1996, so I was 10 or 11. Since that time I’ve been using handles, online names.
Like to stay anonymous?
To stay anonymous, and also in a weird way it’s like a little persona that you can adopt… To me, Basqo Bim was just something that sounded nice and rolled off the tongue. I was playing a lot with the letter B, and B sounds, and was kind of fascinated with sounds and language and voices… They’ll just get stuck in my head over and over and over. But at that time it was just the letter B.
And you’re a wordsmith, right? You’re a writer as well.
That’s actually my background, yeah. So part of my story is that I didn’t start making art until I was 29—I’m 39 now. But something I didn’t put together is, “Oh yeah, writing is an art, as well.” I’ve got an English degree, I’ve read and written voraciously my entire life.
How does your creative process tell the story of your Colombian heritage? I know there’s a lot of history in Colombian mask-making.
For me, masks were an interesting format. Prior to living in New Orleans and moving here six years ago, I started making art, but it was just illustrating. I was doing a little bit of stitching, a little bit of embroidery, but it was more to keep myself entertained—I wanted to get better at it and it was fun. And when I landed here in New Orleans, I had no money, didn’t know anybody, didn’t have gigs, didn’t have anything. A lot of what I was used to using were these nicer illustration markers and things that I didn’t have and I didn’t know how to work backwards from the start. So it was very much like, “OK what do I have around me? What are some things that I’ve been interested in doing?” And watching my partner Justine—she’s always been a person who makes in 3D and I just never was that person—it was awesome watching her work. Once Carnival rolls around, all these people I’ve met, who I didn’t know were creatives, pull out all these Rubbermaid tubs of costume stuff and start putting together [costumes], and beading their faces and stuff like that.
Growing up in New Orleans, I feel like we are all hoarders of little objects that we find along the way. And then we organize these things. I feel like everyone has a Mardi Gras costume closet or creative bin. Then when Mardi Gras rolls around we take all these pieces and we put them together into a creation—we’re embodying something.
Absolutely. I think that is how the mask-making of mine came about, just a collection of little things. It started off with, “Oh cool, a mask, let me draw on that,” and then it got to the point where all of a sudden I’ve got all these little tchotchkes and piles of beads and things. I tend to be a goblin when it comes to treasures of any sort. Me and Justine will be walking, and she’ll be like, “You want that,” and I’m like, “Yes I do.” It’s a framework that I now have, but I see these things as a puzzle. I just don’t know what pieces belong to the puzzle yet.
When you work with these objects, is there a ritual process and a meditative process that naturally unfolds? Are you passing energy through it? What’s your spiritual process when you work with these objects and create a mask?
I didn’t know what a practice was until three years ago when I had my first art show [Menjurje y Maranguango at The Front gallery in October 2021] and people were asking me about my practice. So it’s been a lot of learning… As the years have gone on I’ve had to be more methodical and organized to keep my things where they need to be. But I’ve got my desk, and I’ve got all my stuff on it, and it’s arranged, and the work space itself becomes an altar. Even my cutting mat: There’s a mise en place to all of these things when I walk into my studio because I need that to happen for me to get into that space. It’s part of the ritual.
Jamais Vu rooted in the cypress trees at Fontainebleau State Park, March 2021.
Your masks have names, and there are stories that go with them. Each mask becomes a character, right? There’s a story. How are you communicating that to your audience and to your community?
I think when it comes to the storytelling aspect and letting the character drive the mask, that’s been a little bit of back and forth and push and pull in a lot of directions. When you and I met, that was very, very early on. I think I had made maybe three or four masks at that point, total. And before that I hadn’t made any… So with the stories it’s the old me trying to find its way out. I feel very strong as a writer; I think that might be my strongest creative talent… I think this has been a way for it to come out. I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of Carl Jung’s golden shadow: It’s those qualities you admire in other people but that you wish you had yourself… Seeing myself and being like, “Oh man I can do this. I have to open this door for me, for myself, and allow myself to shine in this way.” I know I mentioned earlier that they were just a format for aesthetic play—they’re not. Started off in that way, and here we are now. And I think the writing is in that same way. The writing for these masks started off as, “I don’t want to just share a mask, it needs more.”
I use the masks as a character, as a vehicle for the story itself. So the last show that I put together with intention and a concept was at the Contemporary Arts Center this past spring. It was up for a few months. I was asked to do it pretty close to the deadline, and most times I’ve been asked to do something I’ve had a ton of masks. So I’m usually like, “Yeah, I’ll just go hang some.” I didn’t have anything. [So] I made 16 masks.
Oh wow, that’s a lot.
I made 16 masks from scratch and wrote this narrative. I banged out all the typing in a matter of hours, I sat down and wrote it straight. It’s the longest I’ve ever written for each mask… So now that I’ve put this show out there, and I’ve had this chance to wax philosophical with myself I’m focusing on writing children’s books for this next year.
All art is expensive. I haven’t encountered any art that doesn’t cost us money, time, energy, and resources. How are you funding your projects?
If I take a step back and look at the past two years of how I’ve been paying my rent and how I’ve been buying supplies, it’s been through larger installation work, doing events, workshops, and selling my masks one by one.
How are you making your art accessible to everyone in the New Orleans community?
I would love to do more stuff in the neighborhood. That’s a venture of mine that I’m shooting for [in] 2025, to figure out how to better share my art. But also, I was viewing it as how do I serve my neighborhood and my community? Whether it’s involving kids in this, and we teach them, there’s a way, right? And there’s smarter people than I that have figured it out. So I think that’s my goal. But as it stands now, unfortunately, mostly galleries. They’re free to get into, which is nice.
What are some of your self-imposed limitations, and how do you channel the energy to overcome them?
The biggest one is being 29 when I started. That scared the fuck out of me because when I started I was deep in office world. I was making my way to a good job—I was working 9 to 5 and I was making art from 6 to 12.
Yeah, I know the life very well. It’s exhausting.
Corporate world is very different from our world. I felt like I was pushing myself. So that’s a big one there, just being older—or in my eyes older, I don’t see it that way anymore… And you know I got over that through experience. Meeting other people who started later in the game, realizing that it doesn’t matter when you start, there was just a period of growth and getting over myself. And I think that’s the biggest motivational thing I taught myself. I taught myself to get over myself a lot. The next biggest one is that I don’t have any framework whatsoever for art. I don’t have the language, I don’t have the context.
You are a self-taught artist.
Completely. I had my brother to lean on through the first stages of getting my wheels moving. And just learning to draw and things. But yeah, everything else has just been as I go, picking it up piecemeal, in the wrong order. So those are the two big insecurities I’ve put on myself, imposter syndrome stuff.
Our creation comes from our heartstrings and our trauma—it’s a healing process, right? How does your family and your heritage influence the art that you’re making today?
I’m being a lot more selfish in my art, I’m gonna be honest with you.
It’s a very selfish experience.
Oh yeah, and I’m learning to use it, as you said, in a healing way intentionally; meditative, intentionally. The way my family influences the work I’m doing these days is I’ve got this massive call back to the things that make me happy. I feel like I’m returning home in a sense in my head… I feel like I’m returning to that place because I finally feel safe. I feel more confident in myself and I think my family shows up in that way because the places I’m returning to in my work are the places that were born at home when I was a kid. I mentioned earlier my love affair with books and reading; that’s because of my folks.
Jazz Fest 2024
It’s evident that through your work and your illustrations that Where the Wild Things Are was definitely a childhood classic for you.
Oh my god, yeah. And that’s a really good segue, too, because Maurice Sendak, I mean everybody who’s doing it or making it, is not following his path but he carved out that road in the sense of children’s books. He changed the face of them completely. There’s a couple people before him but those books went from being looked at as a picture book and ABCs to like high art… He told stories about his Jewishness, he told stories about him being a kid and being sick in bed all the time. That’s why most of his books feature the protagonist in bed—that’s him.
It’s such a vulnerable, scary thing to release your art into the world because people can interpret it in all kinds of different ways.
It’s not yours anymore. The argument can be made that it was never yours to begin with. Not knowing the foundations of art, not knowing how to talk about art… For me, it’s hard to take credit for something I don’t think I did. I think most of the stuff I make it’s just technical ability; craftsmanship, let’s say.
Or somebody has to have the inner voice to want to make it. It’s your inner voice that’s telling you, you’re going to make huge monster masks. Nobody’s telling me to go out and do this. And I tried to make a monster mask once and I’m like, I’m not the right person to make monster masks. I can make other masks, but I’m not the monster mask person.
Now that you say it like that, I never thought of it like that. To me, when I was hearing this from people, this feedback, it was like, “Dog, I can’t take credit for this. This is just an idea that spawned out there in the ether.”
That was your voice.
And that was the battle. I didn’t know how to talk about art. So it’s hard to take credit for it.
What do you have going on in 2025?
The biggest thing is the installation that I haven’t been able to talk about. Are you familiar with JAMNOLA? Up here on Royal?
Yeah, absolutely.
So they bought a new location this past January up on Royal and Frenchmen. Collin [Ferguson] and Cat [Todd] from Where Y’Art invited me to meet with them last year in 2023, and told me they were partnering with JAM for a new location. It’s like 10,000 square feet. So they bought that, and they’re renovating it entirely… JAM 2 is completely immersive. It’s got a narrative, it’s fantastical, it’s not just, “Welcome to New Orleans, here’s how we made the jazz.” It was completely out of nowhere and I was like, OK, yes, let’s see about this. I was very curious and I walked out of there with the honor of being invited to work on the biggest installation I’ve ever done.
It’s not a tourist destination.
It will be, for sure, but it’s a place where you and I could go for fun. You could take your kid there multiple times and have a different experience each time.
Is there a grant where you’re being funded to participate in it?
They straight up paid me. It’s a fully funded endeavor; it’s a business. The two guys that started JAM 1 have partnered with Cat and Collin from Where Y’Art… it’s the four of them [Cat Todd, Collin Ferguson, Jonny Liss, and Chad Smith] and they’ve got a team. They’ve got a music person, a curator, all-the-way-down kind of thing. But it’s a small team.
You’re captivating your audience, you’re keeping us entertained without even really trying.
I feel like you just manifested for me because I’ve been trying to fucking put a word on that. How I’ve approached my life and everything, when I’ve got a goal, I do what I call turtling. And to me, turtling means withdrawing into my shell, protecting myself, and planning. And building, and building, and building.
Well turtles have to hibernate. We have a sulcata tortoise in our backyard—huge! I’ve watched this guy. This tortoise kind of goes into hibernation. And then he comes out and he’s this really social, interactive, affectionate, playful creature.
Gotta charge up, man. And so to your point, that’s my social battery, that’s how it feels when it comes to the thing you talked about, the giving a gift of that energy, that spirit, and in this capacity, maybe that’s another imposter syndrome thing. Maybe I feel like if I don’t have myself ready to [go at] X point then I can’t debut, or whatever it is.
I just keep on seeing this theme in all of your artwork: It’s very, very historic, it’s archaic, it’s ancient.
It’s big, big sweeping brush strokes.
It’s woven into your DNA, in my personal opinion.
It’s in there, Tammie. My parents told me that when I was a little kid, when it was just me around, before my little brother, I would tell stories to them. I would just make them up as I went along, and I would never repeat myself, and it’d be a good story. And apparently that’s just been in there from the start.
It’s your folklore and it’s been passed down.
It’s my secret strength, I think.
It feels really natural for you to start making children’s books, for you to be a part of art installations where other generations are gonna come, and whatever story you’re telling, it’s gonna be told to a lot of different people.
I think that’s something I could benefit from thinking about more. Like in the same way that I found those books, and in the same way my parents would take me to the library, in the same way that I’d get these little sketch books, I hope that—I don’t necessarily want someone to think of me as a human being, I want someone to think about the characters and the stories and the lore and these things I’ve helped manifest into the world. That’s more important. I’m just a person, dude. There’s fucking [8] billion of us. Those stories, like you said, will outlast.
You have lots of different avenues where you can express yourself. And I’ve seen it tied in together, too. For example, the umbrella at Jazz Fest.
I feel like I’m collecting. It’s the same turtling. I’m building the skill set for this big life push. I’m pushing it all in front of me a little bit at a time. I’m scooting forward towards this ephemeral one goal at the end—and I know there’s not really one goal.
Do you have one?
Oh yeah… It just feels hazy. Is it a mirage? Is it a ghost? Is it just heat coming off of the sidewalk? I don’t know. But I want it to be true, and I’m doing everything I can to manifest it. Hence, my pushing towards video… I’ve been jumping through hoops to try to complete these shows, to play catch-up in a sense, and I’m also trying to support myself financially.
And it’s really hard when you need money to make the art. I know this as an artist. We need money to make the art, then we need money to pay for our cost of living, which is increasingly rising right now. And then you need to convince an audience that your art is of value so that they purchase your art or want to pay to experience it. It’s a lot that happens in your own personal business model to be an artist. Have you been able to do it successfully?
To survive off my art? Yeah, I’m technically a full-time artist right now. I’ve been living off of my work for two years.
Do you have any advice that you would want to give to an artist who is currently doing what you used to do? The day job and then staying up exhausted at night and working on their own personal projects. Because I feel like when you’re in that space you feel like that’s the only way.
If someone was in that position and asked me for advice, my question would be, where do you want this to be? Where do you want to take this? Do you want to spend 80 hours a week working on this—just this? And if your answer is yes, OK that’s great.
Are you happy with the decisions you’ve made to just be a full-time artist?
A lot of those decisions were made for me, to be honest with you. Film went away. I had no choice. I couldn’t find work. It was a moment where I said to myself, “I have to do this because if I don’t, I’m cooked.” I can’t find work, there’s no film, what do I do, I go back and live with my parents or something. Or I move to a different town. My back felt against a wall so I just threw myself at it, and I think maybe that’s the advice I’d give to someone that’s got the 9 to 5 and 6 to midnight: What do you want and how much of yourself are you willing to throw at it? Because that’s it. That’s really it.
For more info, check out @basqo_.
Top photo: Basqo Bim’s Presque Vu stands in the waters of Lake Pontchartrain at Fontainebleau State Park, March 2021.
Photos by Tammie Quintana
