As a brown artist, I have mixed feelings about my relationship to art and my "responsibilities" post-Trump.

Vivek Shraya

Categorized in : Art Feelings Responsibility

I have been and continue to be committed to art as a tool to ignite, comfort, and discomfort.

tools comfort art

Of course, I can't separate my queerness from my brownness - if anything, my queerness amplifies my brownness, and vice versa - but I spent so much of my early twenties trying to erase my differences, often without awareness of what I was doing.

differences vices trying

I couldn't write about love without writing about hate - specifically, how the experience of hatred embeds itself in the body and prevents love from entering or leaving.

hate hatred writing

It's exciting to consider how art, in its ability to reveal, can be ahead of the artist.

artist exciting art

When I wouldn't leave home without my blue contacts or when I was bleaching my hair, I didn't have the language to articulate that I was trying to assimilate to whiteness. If anything, I was trying to "look normal."

home hair blue

I feel like I have had to catch up to the art I've made, and learn from the protagonists I have written, especially in relation to gender.

gender made art

In poetry, I didn't have to provide resolution. I could ask hard questions without feeling responsible for the answers.

resolution answers feelings

As a person of color, I know race can't be stripped from admiration or preference.

admiration color race

My intention was never to write a "trans novel" - which is perhaps an effective strategy for writing a trans novel.

strategy intention writing

Should I be collaborating with artists of color solely because of their race and my politics? This question is weighted with my own worry that I have been invited to speak or collaborate solely because of my race, and not because of my abilities.

color artist race

I continue to explore poetry.

I have always considered the aesthetic of a project, including press photos, as a means to further the message of the art itself.

messages mean art

As a general rule, I tend to collaborate with artists whose work I admire.

admire artist

In my thirties, I have felt a greater urgency to make art that highlights what it feels like to be racialized, likely due to living in a country that obscures our racism with the idea of "multiculturalism."

country ideas art

If anything, I have witnessed the ways my art travels, or is rendered more accessible, when sanctioned by or connected to white artists.

white way art

Despite the fact that I'm not highly skilled in any visual art, aesthetics have always played a strong role in my art, including my first albums.

albums strong art

I am more likely to get paid for my art if it's presented alongside a white artist, so the questions around value and agency arise: What choices should I make, or do I have to make, if I want to be compensated for my work? Why isn't my art valued on its own?

agency white art

I didn't want to give the white reader an opportunity to think of racism as imaginary - a sentiment that is already a central barrier in addressing the problem.

white opportunity thinking

Generally, I start by observing the existing and popular narratives in my social spheres and media, and the pressures I face in my own life experiences. As someone who is "newly" trans, I am constantly thinking about what the dominant narratives are around transness, how my work can push against these narratives, and how it already falls into these traps.

media fall thinking

When I was writing, I wanted every word to be not only deliberate, but musical. Precious.

musical wanted writing