Colonization and Migration
ROM RTIST e
ing Photo: Jan Tabery
and wellness. Our bodies carry within them and imprinted ON them colonized histories (how can we ignore 500 years of that kind of violence?) and we continue to absorb current impacts of classism, ableism, racism, shadism, and gendernormativity into and onto our bodies. I’m interested in what and how these stories are blocked, how they can be opened, and then transformed into storytelling through text and movement and song. Both the performing arts and medicinal arts give us access to an unheard story and that is what I’m most interested in. So I strive to make work that is political and in some
form personally spiritual. When creating work I often refer to Atraud when he said something like “Open their mouths with laughter and then shove the truth down their throat”. That’s what I want to be doing anyway. There have been many times, while working in my industry that my political or spiritual voice feels taken away. In the past, severing my work from spirit or politic has resulted in a lack of well-being. So if I choose to take on work that is not connected to this I need to balance it with work that does, and that might mean my own personal practice and process rather than in performance. As much as the next artist, and as much as I want to
redefine work outside of the context of capitalism, I need paying work to survive in this system. But as a Queer- South Asian-Radical-Sometimes Femme finding work in an industry shaped by colonial and capitalist frameworks can be difficult. My industry is one of the slowest changing in terms of race politics. And believe or not, queer politics too. (A large bunch of us might be Queer, but the stories on stage definitely don’t reflect that). And the skin on stage, and the stories layered within those bodies, don’t reflect our population demographics here in Toronto or across Canada. As said by many who have come before me and many
of my colleagues continue to say: As South Asian artists, artists of colour, and indigenous artists, we have to work ten times as hard, be ten times as talented, and be ten times as dedicated as our White colleagues, in order to be heard and seen as equal and worthy. So sometimes when really big opportunities knock on our doors it’s important to take them. One- so we can pay our bills; two- to build credibility within an industry that hasn’t figured out how to include brown faces on stage; and three- because being on those stages or creating for those stages or directing for those stages becomes a political act.
iAM March 2012 11
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