Dancing With The Sheyd

Reviews Brian Nicholson | October 1, 2026 Rotem Anna Diamant came to my attention with their minicomic Cute Nose. Art examples posted online were strikingly unlike anything that might come immediately to mind. Perhaps the panels resembled animation cels of foregrounded figures going about their motions, but printed small and absent painted backgrounds, the sort of stories they’d be telling were left a mystery. The drawings were indeed cute, but not in a pejorative sense, nothing you could point at accusingly as being in thrall to the trends of an era. Perhaps this was owed to the implicit sense of criticism of aesthetics considered palatable, safe enough to be given to women or children. “Cute,” even as a term of praise, can be belittling, and the nose is a particularly fraught feature, owing to its ethnic associations; for one to be cute — small and round, historically — is the purview of a few rare varietals of whiteness. In Dancing With The Sheyd, Diamant depicts themselves and their kin with a long and witch-like schnozz. Not the bulbous big nose for comedy’s sake seen in Mark Newgarden cartoons, but a self-image that identifies with ethnic caricature for its disagreeability. B...