Meet Megha Jairaj

We were lucky to catch up with Megha Jairaj recently and have shared our conversation below.

Megha, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.

In short, I would say, in the sparks of everyday activities- like making breakfast or cleaning out my cat Kumba’s litter.
I personally find it hard to keep my studio practice alive all the time and maybe a lot of other artists with day jobs relate to this. There is a lot of living done in between. When there is something pressing to explore, then I rely on certain tools that I have accumulated over time to make the work. But ultimately I can only count on the small acts of practicing everyday life to keep creativity alive. And it is in the breaks of practice where newer ideas emerge or where I am able to re-think things and make choices that did not seem available before. It is definitely not a steady stream but rather meandering.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

A place of absence, provisionality and repair often informs how my work organizes itself. I am an artist, teacher and cultural worker currently living in Los Angeles, California. More recently, I have found myself conjuring alternative social practices to bring attention to the ecology and (non) hierarchies present around me. Through found/archival objects, print and framing encounters they have been making itself seen in the form of live performances and collaborations.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

These are not necessarily skills I have honed but rather look at them as tools in my carrier bag that are always available to me. The first one would be to remain curious vs. making conclusions(playing into biases or hierarchies) while asking questions, to learn. Another would be to know your agency and that of others. To know where you end and others begin- so you may practice a reciprocal collaboration. The last one I would say is knowing when to take a break and take time out. I think we need to take as many breaks as we can especially with how fast paced things are now where we are trying to catch up with bots.

What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?

If we are talking about skills, I suppose it’s always good to try out things new things. At the least it gives me a different perspective of things and insight into what I never knew. But I believe the trope of strength and weakness is created by capitalistic norms and there is a sense of failure(?) associated with this kind of uncertainly that it brings. There is a quote I would like to share from a book I love called ‘Slow down fast, A Toda Raja’ is a book-conversation between Camila Marambio & Cecilia Vicuna “Uncertainties that confuse me and crack open my experience of being singular, leaving me so resonate and discover I too know the language of interconnectivity. Uncertainties that liberate me by disintegrating my sense of exceptionalism.” I think lately I have been trying to lean into how interdependent we are, maybe someone else can chime in where I cannot and that’s okay because in the collective that makes sense and it kind of feels like the only way it needs to.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: megha.jairaj

Image Credits

Rashed Qurwash