We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Veena Aragam. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Veena below.

Veena, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Taking the risk to become an artist “later in life” was huge for me. (I was 28, I wasn’t so old, but I think when it comes to how we are defined in society, it can be considered an older age to start being an artist…lucky for me, I don’t care about that stuff. Hahaha.)

I was leaving everything I thought I knew behind. Knowing things and having a life where I knew what would happen next was great in just the knowing (as in, there were no secrets and I knew what my future had in store), but I wasn’t living in comfort. The people around me, the career, the life…it wasn’t for me. I tried to fight it till the end, but due to stress I became so ill I had to quit my last job and come home. During this time, I was itching to try and sell my art and designs. I thought, “If I don’t do it now, I will never know.”

So, I did it. And I am now a full-time professional artist.

It was the greatest change I’ve ever made. I live a fulfilling life, and the days look brighter. I just finished an exhibit in Baltimore on the “twin flame” phenomenon as it exists in Hinduism. Although the art is not traditional Indian art, I told my own personal story through my own art with symbols referring back to Hinduism and ancient sciences that are used today (such as the knowledge of chakras, meditation, and others.) This was a huge stepping stone in my career and I cannot wait to do more and show more of my work to others. I was so happy to see how many people it reached.

Last year I also released an EP called “DARK FEMININE”, an EP going from fighting oneself to accepting oneself. My favorite track on it is “Butterfly”, so if you’re looking to try my music, please give that one a listen!

I also run “The Kaleidoscope” – a member’s only area – for a monthly fee there are free (physical) goods for member’s only plus extra content!

There are many more projects lined up, and I’m looking to try new things, so follow my socials for more!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

So, I was an art student throughout grade school and always thought I would do art and music. But when college hit, I had to choose something that was agreeable to family (and people who wanted to insert their opinions, as they do…)

So I decided on Asian Studies. I loved it. Love every bit of it. Even in my private time, I keep up with history, language, and politics of Asia. I am a history and language nerd so it was so stimulating for me. And I was good at my job of translating and teaching. But I wanted something more, and as much as I loved the job, the job “didn’t love me.” There was no career for me.

As mentioned, due to the stress, I came home from Japan severely ill and decided it was time for a change. By this point, I didn’t want to continue something I couldn’t see myself growing in before I died. So while still teaching I thought, why not?

I knew I was good at art and music. Even without the “proper tools” I got started. I had my cheap-ass pens, pencils, papers…and a broken computer to make music on. No friends in the business or anything. But we live in a world where this kind of information is available readily to the public…starting a business, staying protected, etc. SO after a bit of research, I got started on building xSubtlexSmilex®, too.
Before I knew it, I had my own business, my art and music was getting views and listens, I was becomin well known, people were interested in what I had to say…I really can’t believe the amount of growth in these last few years just from taking that first step. The risk was extremely scary and worth it.

My work is unique to myself, considering my demographic of being an Indian-American woman, including my image. I don’t do the type of art or music that is expected of my community. I don’t stick to a box. Although I listen to, view, and love my fellow Indian-American musicians and artists, I just feel that I don’t do what they do, which definitely makes it harder to be seen and heard, since society already has a label on my community. So, because I don’t do what people expect of us, people think it’s easy to drown me out.
(And all I have to say is…oops. People see me. Guess it wasn’t what was expected…hahaha.)

My art is contemporary (for the most part). My main medium is pen and ink, with the occasional acrylic and spray paint paintings. I am often inspired by a lot of the music I hear and will do impromptu paintings and sketches thanks to the colorful world of music!
My music is experimental – I just play with a lot of sounds. I love doing it. And I hand-paint clothing. One of my other favorite things to do as well.

I’m proud of how far I’ve gotten considering where I came from, my demographic, and what I’ve achieved in such a short amount of time. I hope to help others along the way with my voice and show everyone with love and light, you can succeed as yourself.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Society needs to stop boxing Indian-American artists. And the “I can’t do it/You can’t do it” mentality needs to change in our community.

It was, unfortunately, taught to us by the closest to us. We are often told we can’t do things and are told to be in a “stable career” (of the family’s choosing, of course).
I mean, but it doesn’t matter if you choose a stable career. If it’s not what the elders want, we won’t do it.
It’s extremely rare if we do. So, unfortunately, even if Indian-Americans are in the arts, they have another career or job they put first, it’s just kept as a hobby, or they do a type of art that is already popular in the country. It unfortunately allows others to then paint our community’s story, especially when it comes to history and cultural practices that is often bastardized by the new-age movements/religion in the west.

I don’t mind people who believe in it, as schools of thought will evolve with time…

But as we are well taught in our communities, knowledge is important. Culture is important. Practice is important. And what we do with this knowledge is important. The last thing we want as Indian-American communities is for people to paint more of a false narrative on our community.

So as a society, it’s important to know the Indian-American community holds a lot of the same things dear to us, but at the same time cannot be boxed into one image.
But within our community, it is also important to understand and accept that if we don’t speak up for ourselves, we will never be heard, and people will put words in our mouth…Let’s change that.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I acutally didn’t find it till recently…maybe a year or two ago? As a “twin flame” myself, I was experiencing a phenomenon that I was just trying to find answers through tarot card readings online. Don’t get me wrong – as someone born with their own intuitive gifts, tarot is great! But they are just messages, there is nothing more than that. So when I was trying to look for more answers to be able to help myself more, the community I was gathering information from was, I found out, of the new-age community. I had no idea as tarot is also used in India to read fortunes (although it isn’t a traditional Indian practice). It’s kind of also when I found out that this religion/community had it’s limits.

There is just so much erasure of all the cultures and religions it takes from…and if people who don’t really know much about what it means to truly do yoga and meditate, the chakra system, and even manifestation can get art and music deals, then I must be some sort of wizard in my knowledge. (Hahaha, just kidding. There is always more to learn, even in our own cultures!)

For someone who needed more answers than just the twin flame phenomenon, I turned back to my own culture – went back to my own roots. And found all the answers I needed because of how enriched with information my culture was – and these are the practices I needed to help myself. As someone who has done meditation all my life just to keep balance in these intuitive gifts I have inherited, I had a sudden epiphany of, “…why haven’t I checked our stories?” And…the story of Shiva and Shakti that *I grew up with* suddenly clicked as having the information I needed. I was suddenly like, “…what? Why…what?” (I should have known that already, but…here I am. Hahaha. When going through the phenomenon, it is extremely overwhelming at the beginning…I just had to take it day by day so I have no idea if any brain power to remember myself everyday was used. Haha.) I find many twin flames or people who have spiritual awakenings go through the same things – looking for more answers are often geared towards older and indigenous religions/cultures/ways of life.

And I come from an ancient culture, so going back to my roots, I was able to deepen my training in meditation, learn more about myself and where my family comes from, our family’s gifts, how our culture and the various teachings guides us…

…And unfortunately how there is an erasure of a lot of our teachings in the western world as we are not a western religion, but used and seen as an “exotic/outdated/ancient method” that using some of works for people in their daily lives.

(And, please, use the teachings!! But don’t *teach* it when you don’t know all of it, and if you didn’t have a proper teacher yourself.)

And I found that this was a huge problem where I’m from, so I want to now use my art to educate others, at least as an intro to something deeper, and to hopefully motivate others to deepen their own education! We will learn for all our lives – I hope people will be more open to learning and will find the fun in it! I love viewing art of different cultures and styles myself – so I hope people find the pleasure in doing so while viewing my art as well! Learning about other cultures from their sources is always enriching, and we are lucky to live in a country as diverse as ours to hear many voices.

(And yes, the historian and teacher in me never left – I just use it differently now.)

This is my motivation for now, but as a human, I am always growing and learning – it’ll be interesting to see how I grow as an artist and see if anything changes!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://xsubtlexsmilex.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/xsubtlexsmilex
• Twitter: https://x.com/xsubtlexsmilex
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@xSubtlexSmilex
• Other: The Kaleidoscope – xsubtlexsmilex.com/the-kaleidoscope

Image Credits

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