Today we’d like to introduce you to Monica Srivastava

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?

I always knew I wanted to be an artist, even if I didn’t always know what that meant. I’ve been a maker and creative person since I was a child, and my need to engage with the arts only increased as I got older. When I decided to pursue an arts education at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, I didn’t know what that was going to look like. I don’t think I even felt like a “real artist” until I was 21. When I first got to MassArt as an incoming freshman, I hopped around degrees for a year after declaring my major. I finally settled in as a dual major in art education and painting. In the art education department, I took a class called “interdisciplinary studio” taught by Steve Locke. He showed me what it meant to be a contemporary artist. He taught me the basics of engaging with contemporary art, the importance of visiting museums and galleries, how to be critical and think for myself. It was through this class that I learned about the different hats artists often wear.

After receiving my degree, I tried my hand at a little of everything. I worked as a museum educator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; I interned as a curator at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, and I continued painting in my home studio. It was through this process of trying everything that I realized I needed a Master’s degree in Fine Arts. Thinking back on this time, I can’t pinpoint how I reached this decision. I knew it was something I’d always wanted, and that it was the next step in my career, so the decision itself seemed natural.

I applied to Pratt Institute’s MFA program as a painter and was lucky enough to get in. Since then, I’ve been fortunate in many respects – I had a show at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Boston, I’ve been featured in HyperAllergic, a group show in Chelsea, and I now have a studio at Silver Art Projects in the World Trade Center.

One thing leads to another. Which leads to another. The path was always there, I just had to keep walking down it. How I got to where I am is only clear when I look back. But, I’m human. I can’t see where I’m going next, and I can’t guess at where I’ll be in ten years. The same way I couldn’t guess that I’d be where I am now, ten years ago.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?

Absolutely not. I don’t think any path worth pursuing is ever a smooth one. In many ways, the struggle makes it worth it. If it were easy then anyone would do it. I’ve never been interested in following the easy path. The struggles I’ve faced have had to do with the recurring issues of leaving my comfort zone, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, and learning to say no.

When it was time to leave Boston to pursue my MFA in Brooklyn, I wondered if I was doing the right thing. I was leaving my network and the life I’d built to go to a new city, where I knew no one, and where I wasn’t sure I would succeed. I did it anyway. I had to leave my comfort zone in order to grow into the next version of myself.

When I entered my thesis semester at Pratt Institute, I doubted my ability to achieve what I wanted to. I didn’t know how to do what I wanted to do, or if I would succeed in doing it. I did it anyway, and got a feature in HyperAllergic at the end of it. Self-doubt is a naturally occuring opportunity for growth and improvement.

There have been many moments where it would have been easy for me to give up, or to stop persevering. I was accepted into Pratt Institute’s MFA program in 2020, right after being laid off from my jobs due to the pandemic. I had to decide to defer my admission, and figure out how to use my extra year in a way that would make me a stronger MFA candidate.

My two years at Pratt were incredibly tumultuous. I think back on them, and wonder how so much could’ve happened in two years, and how so little could have happened since. My grandfather passed away the day after I had my very first class. This loss was so central, so gutting to my life, that my first few months were colored by it. Everything I made and did in that first semester was colored by the fact that I had lost someone so dear to me.

Two months later, I had surgery and couldn’t paint for a month. The summer before my second year, I got COVID, and a particularly bad case of it too. In the weeks and months afterwards, I struggled with regaining muscle strength, stamina, and general energy all while dealing with lingering symptoms of brain fog, inflammation, and fatigue.

During the first semester of my second year, my grandmother, my last remaining grandparent, passed away in India. To experience grief again so soon after losing my grandfather felt like a cruel cosmic joke. Knowing that I had no grandparents alive felt like I had become untethered from my heritage, from generational knowledge, and from the possibility of returning to a “motherland”.

But, the only way out is through. Every struggle and bump in the road taught me something invaluable. I had to experience all of it in order to get to the next step. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?

I think of myself primarily as a painter, though I’ve worn many hats over time. My work explores themes of identity, ethnicity, family and relationships, and diaspora through the merging of self portraiture with Indian patterning and architecture. As a child of Indian immigrants, I grew up feeling rejected by both the Eastern and Western parts of my identity. This negotiation of belonging is the main conflict throughout my work.

I first encountered patterned lattice screens when I visited India in 2018, as remnants of the Mughal Empire. These screens operated as a way to circulate light and air through an architectural space while granting privacy to those within. I was initially intrigued by these screens as they articulated a porous border between the inside and outside, what is private and public. But the spaces behind these screens were often very feminine spaces, due to the privacy afforded to those within. So when I seek to define the architecture of my belonging and to carve out a space in which my identity exists, I use these screens as symbols of a space which might hold all the complexities of my belonging.

Throughout my life, I’ve also had a fondness for Indian fabric and textiles. I became interested in the notion that the fabric could simultaneously conceal and obscure parts of myself. If I were to wear traditional Indian clothes in India, then I would be seen as fully Indian, hiding the Western aspects of myself. But if I were to wear western clothes, I would be completely distanced from the Indian part of my identity. The fabric and its patterns became symbols of identity, culture, community, family and relationships by exploring what it means to be connected, to be part of the “fabric” of something.

In my work, I am part artist and part performer. I am the reference for my paintings, and I make work in the context of my life and family history. I am in constant pursuit of the world of the beautiful, bringing together vibrant colors and detailed patterning.

I don’t aim to have all the answers; I only aim to be honest.

What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?

I have a few answers to this, because I can’t pick just one.

The first is to do it scared. Whatever it is you’re afraid of doing – do it scared.

The second is that inspiration isn’t real, in much the same way that motivation isn’t. You can’t wait for inspiration to hit to start making. You just have to show up and keep making. The only rule is to work. If you work, it will lead to something.

The third is to believe in your work, even if it seems like no one else does. If everyone understood your work the way you do, then they would just be you.

Lastly, your path is your own. It isn’t going to look like everyone else’s, and only you get to walk down it. Own it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.monicasrivastava.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_mon527/