Shivani Joshi - Creative Process Blog
A close up video of an Indian woman’s hands untangling dark red yarn. Video Credit: Bryony McCaughey
I am.
I am this and that, but I am neither here nor there.
I feel ambiguous.
Regardless, I exist.
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Currently, I am conflicted about sharing my creative process. Part of me wants to write something elegant and sophisticated, so that everyone will know that I have my shit together. Part of me wants to write some vague, incomprehensible thing, so that I don’t have to talk about what my process is. Mostly, it feels self-serving to write about my motivations and intentions, because I’m not too sure what they are yet.
At the same time, I have this internal dialogue of things that have happened to me- very small, minor things that affected me while I was growing up here- and of course, I’m up in my head about it because it feels too vulnerable and also incredibly mundane and boring.
Oh, the angst of it all.
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We are shaped by our world. We can’t always see how, or when, or what specific events made us, but sometimes those moments are incredibly clear. We know about the pivotal moments that we all celebrate and mourn, but what about everything in between?
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I understand that architecture shapes us. We are herded down the highway like cattle, and we move to the right to get to the stairs, and all our movement is now dependent on some architect who made a building look like Marilyn Monroe, or those who made the Gardiner Expressway. We are a product of our society’s design in some way or another. We choose from the options given to us, and we feel free because even though we sit in traffic for 2 hours a day, we get to pick our toothpaste from over 100 varieties. How fun.
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We are also affected by each other. Our culture, our language in the home, our dissonances inside and outside of our cultural experience guide us. I grew up in North America, and within that home, I grew up in another, in India, specifically at the time that my parents left. By this I mean the values passed down to me were the ones that they identified with then, and were probably not nearly as relevant as they were 20 years ago. Saying no to elders was impossible, as was using their first name, and learning the formal and informal nuances of Gujrati was a must. In high school, my friend’s mom asked me to use her first name, and I couldn't. I tried not to call her anything instead.
Of course, the multi-cultural experience is much more complex than this, and this one superficial moment is not what the piece is about, but I won’t share more.
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Somehow, on my own terms, I find my way back to my culture, my community, and my peers. All of us go through this. This is nothing new, but I am different. At parties, we dance, we sit and talk about how we grew up, and we find ourselves switching between languages mid-sentence, mid-thought.
The playlist is a mix of bollywood and pop culture; genres collide and we are the product of that collision. And we are still whole.
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My intention is to explore the feeling of dissonance, and find some universal understanding of how these sticky moments shape us. It’s not important what happened, what trauma is stored there, or who inflicted it (I mean it is for me, but not for the internet).
In rehearsal, I have been working with these fragments of me, stitching them together, untying associations that I made immaturely, and working through who I am and how I became me. In-person, I want to talk about you; your dissonances, your tangled thoughts, and your relationship with them.
If that sounds intriguing, join me on February 23rd at Prospects
PROSPECTS: an evening of dance and discussion presents
Tangled Threads
Created by Shivani Joshi
Thursday, February 23, 2023
7:30PM | Door at 7pm
Art Gallery of Hamilton
123 King St W, Hamilton
FREE!
RSVP HERE!