Artwork by Rama Duwaji.
Rama Duwaji is an American illustrator, animator and ceramist, also notable to general audiences as the wife of 2026 mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani. Duwaji has created animated shorts and magazine illustrations about a variety of topics, ranging from autobiographical explorations of her roots, gender identity and beauty standards to more political, socially conscious work. Some of her art is presented in comic strip format, including her pantomime online graphic novel, 'Razor Burn' (2018), about a teenager finding her own identity.
Life and career
Rama Sawaf Duwaji was born in 1997 in Houston, Texas, as the daughter of a software developer and a doctor, both of Syrian descent. Despite being born in the USA, Duwaji lived in Dubai, capital of the United Arab Emirates, from 2006 until her high school graduation. She originally studied Communication Arts in Doha, Qatar, until moving to Richmond, Virginia, to complete her studies at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, graduating with a B.A. Since 2016, Duwaji has lived in New York City, obtaining an additional Master of Fine Arts (2021) at the New York City School of Visual Arts.
In 2021, Duwaji met her future husband, Zohran Mamdani, son of Indian-Ugandan anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani and film director Mira Nair (of 'Monsoon Wedding' fame). Duwaji and Mamdani married in February 2025. A half year later, the couple received more international media attention when Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, being the first Muslim in this function. A downside to this situation is that Duwaji now lost much of her previous obscurity as an artist, finding out it was just as much "our media story" as his. On 7 November, Duwaji noticed an Instagram account pretending to be her with over 14,000 followers. She quickly went public declaring the account was fake: "This is not me." Interviewed by Bhavya Sukheja for Hindustan Times (24 December 2025), Duwaji said that, despite her new role and fame as NYC's "First Lady", she doesn't just want to be pigeonholed as merely "the mayor's wife" and will continue to create art. She hopes that her new position will allow her to bring more attention to other, undiscovered artists.
Comic strip by Rama Duwaji.
Graphic career
From a young age, Duwaji enjoyed drawing as an emotional expression. In school, teachers would scold her when they caught her scribbling away in her notebooks. She ranks Ronan Bouroullec, Carson Ellis, Lucian Freud, Ashley Lukashevsky, Rithika Merchant, Rachel Levit Ruiz and Betsy Walton among her graphic influences. Growing up between the Middle East and the United States, Duwaji couldn't always relate to either of the cultures. She didn't feel 100 percent Syrian, Emirati or American. Interviewed by Isabella Pearce and Hannah Robathan (Shado, 24 May 2019), she said that she couldn't speak Arabic very fluently and her "western" ideas sometimes clashed with people. But in the USA, her ethnicity also made her an outsider. Western beauty standards sometimes made her feel abnormal. Coping with depression and anxiety, she felt it was difficult finding a therapist who could understand her very specific viewpoint. In Middle Eastern communities, discussing mental health was even more taboo than in the West, so she used her artwork as an outlet for her emotions, but also to show other people in her situation that they are not alone.
Interviewed by Menna Shanab (Thisisyungmea.com, 7 April 2025), Duwaji reflected: "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 NYC, 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."
'Razor Burn' (2018).
Duwaji drew the comic 'Small Wins' about "learning to cope on low functioning days". Her first graphic novel, 'Razor Burn' (published online on Bigmouth Comix in 2018) is a pantomime, semi-autobiographical graphic novel about a teenage girl who feels insecure about her body, like her supposed "big nose", arm hair and acne. Interviewed for Bigmouth Comix (27 July 2018), Duwaji explained how the story came about: "The comic was based off the experiences of myself and many friends/family around me. It is a silent novel with no words, just images, (hopefully) making the book more accessible for people of different languages, socioeconomic, and education levels. It sounds cliche, but 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've felt bizarre and alone struggling with body image or mental health, to realize that hundreds and thousands of women have gone through the exact 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 region such as mental health needed to be talked about."
Duwaji has also created more political drawings, criticizing the ongoing war in Israel, the civil war in Sudan and Syria, but also defending women's rights in the Middle East. In the previously mentioned 2025 interview by Menna Shanab, Duwaji felt that "(…) art is inherently political in how it's made, funded and shared." Duwaji's art has also livened up the pages of magazines like The New Yorker and Vogue.
Animation
In 2020, Rama Duwaji made two animated shorts for the BBC, 'Who Killed My Grandfather?' and 'Virginity Testing'. '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 political prisoner Esra from Egypt, who was subjected for forced "virginity tests" by her prison guards. For the art channel Arte, Duwaji made 'Essence of Memory' (2021), a combination of live-action and animation, in which Syrian refugee Abdulkader Fattouh is followed in France, trying to become a master perfumer. For the same channel, she and Brooklyn graphic designer Tala Barbotin Khalidy made a series of animated shorts about the lives of the Lebanese and Syrian artisans behind the beautifully embroidered pieces.
In addition, she made an animated music video, 'Mesh Hastanna' ('I Won't Wait') for Egyptian rapper Felukah and an animated short, 'Dar El Qamar, for the Bagri Foundation's 'Chang/ce' animated series, reimagining Syria and her family home during the summers throughout her childhood.
Recognition
Rama Duwaji held a solo exhibition in the USA (2018), titled 'More Than'. Among the art on display was her 'Inktober' series, of which she drew 30 women all over the 30 days of October.
Self-portrait.