Dear TRENDS Diary –
I started making digital illustrations as a creative outlet in 2017. I just needed some place to vent. I hated my job at the time, but I also didn’t have a lot of job mobility because I’m on a visa. I can’t just leave a company because I need to find another job that will sponsor my visa. I felt really stuck.
A lot of my early work was specifically about being a Brown woman in corporate America. My work was about the gender pay gap across different races or about companies’ performative activism. I transitioned over to other issues because I had a bigger following and felt like it would be a disservice to just focus on one specific issue. I grew, had more life experiences, and had eyes on me, which made me want to be better at addressing other issues.
Before Biden was elected, someone who worked on his social campaign followed me on Instagram and put my name out when they were looking for artists to cover different parts of his Build Back Better plan. They reached out to me on Instagram, which is kind of a weird experience for something so official! The first and biggest project was a video, narrated by Elizabeth Warren. Then, the Inaugural Committee reached out to me, and other artists, to recreate the Inaugural invitation in our personal style.
December fifteenth to January fifteenth is one month on the Tamil calendar and every day of that month my mom does a different Kolam design. It’s something you would do on New Years or when you open a new business to protect from the evil eye and send good vibes. That was on my mind a lot, so it was a no brainer to use that for the Inaugural invitation.
– Divya Seshadri, as told to Will Betke-Brunswick
