Aya Brown is a Brooklyn-based visual artist whose work reflects the lived textures of Flatbush, Caribbean lineage, and Black cultural memory.
Gaining recognition for her Essential Workers series during the COVID-19 pandemic, she created portraits honoring Caribbean and Black nurses and healthcare workers who are often absent from mainstream representation. What began as drawings and a painting hung from her window, inscribed with “Thank you, I see you”, became a resonant act of public recognition.
Brown’s collaborative initiatives further define her practice. Working alongside close collaborators on print releases and fundraising programs supporting food access organizations like Food with Fam, she approaches art as both expression and direct action.
For Issue 13, Aya is featured in conversation with Caleb Giles
Full segment featured in Issue 13 of Living Proof Magazine
What’s going on?
I’ve got a lot of cool things coming in 2026, so I’m just trying to maintain and keep creating. I know next year is going to be special, so I want to be mentally ready and in the studio, practicing and making things. It’s not easy, though. I’m not going to lie, but I love doing it.
I’ve never had a solo show, so I’m trying to imagine what that even looks like. I don’t know how it works. Do people get invited to have a show and then make the work, or are they just always practicing? So I’m trying to always be practicing, just in case opportunities come up. I’m staying creatively healthy. Sometimes that’s making work, sometimes it’s chilling, watching things, learning. I’m figuring it out as I go.
Anything inspiring you lately?
Yeah. The project I’m working on right now, I can’t really talk about it, but I’ve been working with a lot of my friends, and it’s been really nice to feel supported. It’s something I’ve never done before. It’s not just visual art. There are a lot of different components.
It’s made me really thankful for my community. Late nights at my boy Tuan’s crib, talking for hours, trying to come up with ideas. I’ve also been working with Cake on a program we’re launching in December. It’s a print release with a few artists. For one week, people can buy a roulette print, a print outright, or a full box set. All the money goes to Food with Fam. We started it when SNAP benefits were about to be taken away. It was our immediate response.
I love working with Girls Only because me, Cake, and Brit are best friends. Cake and I are reactive artists. When things happen in the world, we feel it and want to do something. I grew up on SNAP, so this matters to me. But it’s bigger than SNAP. It’s about food access. Food with Fam has been doing this work for years.
Supporting people is something I care a lot about. My name in Japanese means “to bring people together,” and I’ve been leaning into that more this year. As an artist, there are so many spaces you can enter. Art touches everything. Being able to help people through art feels really good.
My idea of success is doing things whose effects I might never fully see. Doing things that are bigger than me.
What materials have you been working with lately?
I’ve been working with clay a lot. When I was younger, I loved Play-Doh, color pencils, stuff like that. That turned into pastels, then watercolor. I like fun, accessible materials, even dollar store materials. I’ve been playing with polymer clay and focusing on customization.
Like the Sonny Angels. I’m Japanese, and I know that mascot culture, but I didn’t see myself as a Black woman reflected in those figures. So I started customizing them so they feel connected to my identity. Putting Evisu jeans on a Sonny Angel is like hip hop. It’s sampling.
I enjoy remixing things across different mediums. Clay and sculpture have been really fun for that, and painting is where it really comes alive. I’m painting on top of found objects, and the customization connects to the same ideas in my paintings, like when I use BB Simon belts or harnesses.
A lot of objects, especially sex-related ones, don’t speak to specific communities. They’re generic. What if they were more customized, more flavorful, more Black? So I started making them by hand. I did a workshop focused on strap-on customization for Black lesbians and queer people. Seeing people feel excited and seen was really powerful.
That connects to your Essential Workers series too, right?
Exactly. I wasn’t thinking it would blow up. I was just noticing what was happening. I’m really into archiving and documentation. With Essential Workers, I kept seeing white nurses and doctors on TV, but I live in Flatbush and see Caribbean women going to work every day who weren’t being recognized.
So I started drawing them. Then I made a big painting and hung it out my window that said, “Thank you, I see you.” Making people feel seen is always the priority.
Read the full interview in Living Proof Magazine Issue 13, available on the Living Proof Patreon and Online Shop.
Photography by: Isobel Rae
