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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.

Vivek Shraya

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Vivek Shraya
Writing
Leaving
Love
Hatred
Couldn
Hate
Experience
Write
Prevents
Body
Specifically
Without
Entering

More quotes by Vivek Shraya

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As a general rule, I tend to collaborate with artists whose work I admire.
Vivek Shraya
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I do use art as a site of protest, particularly in relation to dominant narratives.
Vivek Shraya
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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.
Vivek Shraya
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I used singing as a safety measure. I would pay attention to what songs the popular girls liked, learn those songs from the radio or library cassettes, and then accidentally sing or hum these songs in class. This would impress the girls, who would then defend me from the boys.
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I think white artists have a responsibility to be not only naming white supremacy, but to be using their power and privilege to support artists of color.
Vivek Shraya
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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.
Vivek Shraya
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In poetry, I didn't have to provide resolution. I could ask hard questions without feeling responsible for the answers.
Vivek Shraya
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It's exciting to consider how art, in its ability to reveal, can be ahead of the artist.
Vivek Shraya
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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.
Vivek Shraya
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My art career often feels less like an art career and more like a career in educating, usually by using my body.
Vivek Shraya
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I would love to see more dialogue around the responsibilities of art consumers - how can audiences better financially support artists we love, artists who are doing the work, so that artists have a more solid foundation upon which to make art?
Vivek Shraya
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I continue to explore poetry.
Vivek Shraya
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I especially worry about the ways Canadians can be glib about our supposed difference from the US in our acceptance of diversity.
Vivek Shraya
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I have been and continue to be committed to art as a tool to ignite, comfort, and discomfort.
Vivek Shraya
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As much as I believe in the capacity for art to create change, and as much as being an artist is physically and emotionally challenging, there is ultimately something a bit comfortable about making art in the comfort of your own home.
Vivek Shraya
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I worry about what Trump will inspire in Canada, especially given incidents that have already occurred here since the election.
Vivek Shraya
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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.
Vivek Shraya
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I don't yet know what style will be required for my next novel, but my sense is that each book will involve a new relationship to language.
Vivek Shraya
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I have always considered the aesthetic of a project, including press photos, as a means to further the message of the art itself.
Vivek Shraya
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Children are receptive to talking about gender creativity, confirming the importance of the book as a means to instigate this dialogue at an early age.
Vivek Shraya