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" "I'm here for the people
Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam, MBE (born 18 July 1975), known by the stage name M.I.A., is a British artist, film maker, singer, songwriter, rapper, activist, visual artist, humanitarian, record producer, graphic designer, photographer, fashion icon, and refugee icon. She is often described as one of the most influential artists of the 21st century, covering multicultural and countercultural, convention defying themes and utilizing a range of genres in her music to form a unique avant-garde sound, and for having revolutionized indie/underground/independent/subcultural and mainstream music and culture since her rise to prominence.
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I performed at a show at the MoMA. There was this big dinner there, and I was seated in this hall with the mayor of New York and all these extremely wealthy art-supporting and art-buying people. There was a piece of work hanging in the hall-it was a fan. This fan was supposed to swing by the momentum of its own propeller. So, while we were having dinner, the fan was stopped, and the guy next to me, a curator at P.S.1, said, "Look, this is what art symbolizes today." Like, that piece of art is supposed to be moving, but just to have dinner we've stopped the art. That's what New York is like today. You can't have real art happen in an institution because rich people can make the world stop. The stuff on the street is a lot more interesting.
I don't know which is worse. The fact that I saw it in my life has maybe given me lots of issues, but there's a whole generation of American kids seeing violence on their computer screens and then getting shipped off to Afghanistan. They feel like they know the violence when they don't. Not having a proper understanding of violence, especially what it's like on the receiving end of it, just makes you interpret it wrong and makes inflicting violence easier."