Vivek Shraya

Visual Description: Trisha is a photographic essay consisting of nine pairs of photographs and accompanying text. The installation is hung salon style and spans three walls of the gallery. Each pair juxtaposes one small vintage photograph of Shraya’s mother from the 1970s next to a contemporary self-portrait recreated by the artist herself. The photographs are comprised of various scenes including looking at photos, lounging in a living room, slicing a birthday cake, talking on the phone, waiting for a train, and posing in front of a lake. 

The accompanying text reads:

My story has always been bound to your prayer to have two boys. Maybe it was because of the ways you felt weighed down as a young girl, or the ways you felt you weighed down your mother by being a girl. Maybe it was because of the ways being a wife changed you. Maybe it was all the above, and also just being a girl in a world that is intent on crushing women. So you prayed to a god you can't remember for two sons and you got me. I was your first and I was soft. Did this ever disappoint you?

You had also prayed for me to look like Dad, but you forgot to pray for the rest of me. It is strange that you would overlook this, as you have always said “Be careful what you pray for.” When I take off my clothes and look in the mirror, I see Dad's body, as you wished. But the rest of me has always wished to be you.

I modelled myself—my gestures, my futures, how I love and rage—all after you. Did this worry you and Dad? Did you have the kinds of conversations in bed that parents of genderqueer children on TV have, where the Dad scolds the Mom—“This is your fault”? No one is to blame. Not you, not the god you prayed to. I was right to worship you. You worked full-time, went to school part-time, managed a home, raised two children who complained about frozen food and made fun of your accent, and cared for your family in India. Most days in my adult life, I can barely care for myself.

I remember finding these photos of you three years ago and being astonished, even hurt, by your joyfulness, your playfulness. I wish I had known this side of you, before Canada, marriage and motherhood stripped it from you, and us.

I learned to pray too. My earliest prayers were to be released from my body, believing that this desire was devotion, this was about wanting to be closer to god. I don't believe in god anymore, but sometimes I still have the same prayer. Then I remind myself that the discomfort I feel is less about my body and more about what it means to be feminine in a world that is intent on crushing femininity in any form. Maybe I got my wish to be you after all.

You used to say that if you had a girl, you would have named her Trisha.

Curatorial Description: In Vivek Shraya’s, Trisha, the artist juxtaposes vintage photographs of her mother with self-portraits and prose. Restaging and reimagining these photographs of her mother from the 1970s, Shraya reckons with her own embodiment of trans-femininity through intergenerational relationships. The accompanying text, which addresses the artist’s mother, is also definitively self-reflective and personally speculative. Trisha amasses an archive that is built upon the personal rituals one repeats daily such as cooking, eating, talking on the phone, or waiting for the train. Shraya recreates these seemingly banal activities as a reflection upon self-knowledge and familial ritual. As Shraya queers her family archive by linking past to present, she also reexamines both her and her mother’s unrealized desires about femininity. Trisha gestures towards the poetics of self-actualization. 

Visual Description: Vivek Shraya’s I’m Afraid of Men, is a single channel video filmed at night that follows the artist walking from behind. Filmed as one continuous shot, the camera follows the artist as she walks through a dark open wood. Her back is illuminated by a flashlight which highlights her silver chrome dress and boots. The artist’s voice is played over the video reading a text that is also entitled “I’m Afraid of Men.”

Curatorial Description: Vivek Shraya’s I’m Afraid of Men is a poetic meditation on fear, transphobia, and internalized misogyny. In this video, the artist is filmed from the back, walking away from the camera and through a dark open space. Her back is illuminated by a flashlight which highlights her chrome silver dress and boots. Audio of the artist reading a text plays in the background and acts as the soundtrack of the film. Shraya recounts the reasons why she has been made to feel afraid of men, and the daily adjustments she makes in her demeanor and appearance in reaction to this fear. As a transwoman, Shraya’s video contemplates how transphobia and toxic masculinity seep into her daily life. Habitual activities like getting ready for work, walking, waiting for the bus, and writing emails, become practices of survival rather than unconscious ritual. Acting as a kind of score, the work traces the social choreography of femininity—articulating the ways in which movement and language become legible or illegible under the patriarchy’s constant surveillance.

About

Vivek Shraya is an artist whose body of work crosses the boundaries of music, literature, visual art, theatre, TV, film, and fashion. She is the creator and writer of the new CBC Gem Original Series How to Fail as a Popstar, a Canadian Screen Award winner, and a Polaris Music Prize nominee. Her best-selling book I’m Afraid of Men was heralded by Vanity Fair as “cultural rocket fuel,” and she is the founder of the award-winning publishing imprint VS. Books, which supports emerging BIPOC writers. Vivek has been a brand ambassador for MAC Cosmetics and Pantene, and she is a director on the board of the Tegan and Sara Foundation.