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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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Vivek Shraya
Without
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More quotes by Vivek Shraya

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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?
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 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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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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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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When I was writing, I wanted every word to be not only deliberate, but musical. Precious.
Vivek Shraya
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Writing about racism requires a directness that writing a love story does not.
Vivek Shraya
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Art can sometimes be separate from the artist.
Vivek Shraya
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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.
Vivek Shraya
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My interest in language is steadfast, but I think each project and its accompanying intentions dictate how language must be used.
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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As a brown artist, I have mixed feelings about my relationship to art and my responsibilities post-Trump.
Vivek Shraya
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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.
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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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 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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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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Making music has been connected to one of my greatest heartaches, because my own music has never quite connected with audiences. But it was this heartache that pushed me to explore other artistic avenues, like writing and filmmaking, and I ultimately feel most at home in a multidisciplinary environment.
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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I continue to explore poetry.
Vivek Shraya