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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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Vivek Shraya
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More quotes by 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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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
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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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I continue to explore poetry.
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.
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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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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It's exciting to consider how art, in its ability to reveal, can be ahead of the artist.
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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If anything, I have witnessed the ways my art travels, or is rendered more accessible, when sanctioned by or connected to white artists.
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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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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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 recently did a reading at an elementary school in Ottawa, and one of the children asked me if I was a girl. I said yes. Another child commented that I had a deep voice. I responded: Can girls have deep voices? There was a pause and then the group responded, Yes!
Vivek Shraya
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I have dedicated a significant portion of my time and artistry to making art that addresses various forms of oppression, including white supremacy, misogyny, and biphobia.
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 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 tend to focus less on genre as a starting point and more on idea or intention and let the idea dictate genre.
Vivek Shraya