#SharingProcess Calling yourself an artist doesn't make you one. Not calling yourself one doesn't make you one either. The second one is growing on me. Somehow calling myself it, is making me responsible for being it. A professor once mentioned in a class to us - "We use the word "writer" so casually these days. People say I'm a writer so easily". "I think that maybe because there weren't as many writers then and it was not part of so many job descriptions", I said. And I have struggled with calling myself a writer for as long as I can remember. It is still paralyzing even now, when I basically write to make a living. More and more now, I realize that many of the people that I put on a pedestal as "Writers" or "Artists" were people in privileged positions in some form or another. Their stories were told to me as rags to riches filled with struggles. But, more often than not, they were either white or men or both. And since I could be neither, they... were "Artists" and "Writers". I didn't know many women artists through mainstream media except maybe female actors. In fact, to date most womxn artists I have discovered have been through a female friend's recommendation. Thinking back, it feels to me like, one giant conspiracy. An artist is not a title - I think. It is not a prize. It is not a medal and we shouldn't shy away from it. In my opinion, no word needs more reclaiming than the word 'artist'. We need more artists in the world showing us perspectives different from our own, showing us how to connect and empathise and make sense of the chaos that has increasingly become life. It's 2019 and about time we stop pedestalizing artists and make them day-to-day. And maybe that means calling yourself one. #ThinkingoutLoud #StreamofConsciousness #WomenWhoWrite #WomenWhoDraw #PoetsofInstagram #ArtistsofInstagram #Womxn #Storytelling https://www.instagram.com/p/B0xUU1qHpPA/?igshid=1jcv055bylqhv
