Self Portrait Performance

 

  

            This topic came to mind because it is a huge issue that I've been seeing every day now that I have been in Washington DC for the past month. Throughout the city, there are homeless people everywhere and some have gathered in tents in parks and even near the Nations Capitol.  

I have never seen this amount of homeless people in such a small area. Although there are homeless shelters they are still a lot of people living on the streets. During shifts, there has been a lot of encounter with homeless people and those who were on drugs. 

                Washington D.C. is an expensive city to live in with a high cost of living especially in the downtown areas near the Capitol. The city has put money into homeless shelters and they have been getting filled up. I never knew homelessness was a huge problem until I saw a tent city about 2 blocks from the Capitol building with a group of homeless people staying in tents. The city has been trying to move them away from the area but as you go around the city, there are more tents scattered around the city and homeless people sitting outside on sidewalks with a few of their belongings. 

               I believe these people are here in the city because they believe they would find better opportunities. They believe that there is more money downtown because there are more people, especially those who are wealthy or financially stable. In reality, downtown is not so the best place to look for opportunities especially coming from homelessness. There are more corporate jobs and higher-end jobs in the city than if you were to branch out a little. Then again there needs to be some time of organization to start getting homeless people jobs than just let them suffer in the city that represents America.

John Berger

                "A painting can speak to the soul - by way of what it referred to, but never by the way it                   envisaged."(Page 87)

                    "The art of any culture will show a wide differential of talent. But in no other culture is the            difference between 'masterpiece' and average work so large as in the tradition of oil painting."               (Page 88)

                    "The gaze of the ambassadors is both aloof and warry. They expect no reciprocity. They               wish the image of their presence to impress others with their vigilance and their distance."(Page            97)

  

Jaz Graf

        Although I was unable to attend Jaz Graf's virtual presentation, I did take the time to look more into her background and her work. It is interesting that she is able to take organic material and make something so beautiful. After looking into her pieces on Instagram I realized that she worked with print, bookwork, drawing and sculpted paper. Her technique with making her art pieces through paper makes her work that much more unique and different from other artists. The piece above is my personal favorite of all her art work. I also enjoy how her pieces have different color correlations and plan on seeing more of her work hopefully sometime soon.  

Self Portrait Project

Andy Warhol

                                                                    

                                                                    Jean Michel Basquiat

Amy Sherald

    When creating my self portrait collage I thought of Jean Michel Basquiat and Amy Sherald. I feel as though Jean Michel Basquiat has a fun sense of color and playfulness in his pieces and though I personally perfer black and white photos or pieces, his choices of color tend to have my eyes interested. Amy Sherald self portraits are empowering and so detailed. Even seems that feel like you're meeting these people through her paintings.My project addresses the themes we have spoken throughout our classes because it stems from the empowerment of women. Although I would not go on to consider my self a feminist, I do believe in women equality and self encouragement. I stand for abuse against women and how the topic as such should be talked over more. I also love that the idea of flowers automatically stick to the concept of women which is funny. When you think flowers, you think more female and I will personally take that stereotype. The media also loves portraying feminine products that surround it self with things such as flowers, almost to make that topic more sensitive or soft. My project speaks to my identity because I feel like flowers are strong and they bloom even after much time through darkness such as winter. In many ways I feel like I relate to that simple concept of growth and leaving the past in the past. 

                                                                                                    Quotes :

                                                                   Wangechi Mutu: A New Face for the Met

"It is testament to her belief that, like street theater or religious rituals, art can nudge viewers toward congregation."

The one thing that’s always missing — I think it’s part of the trauma — is the personal element. My parents don’t often talk about their experiences in terms of how it made them feel.”

                                    An Illustrated Guide to Guy Debord’s ‘The Society of the Spectacle’

It can be found on every screen that you look at. It is the advertisements plastered on the subway and the pop-up ads that appear in your browser. It is the listicle telling you “10 things you need to know about ‘x.’” 

"Images influence our lives and beliefs on a daily basis; advertising manufactures new desires and aspirations."

skyline self portrait

    

 For my final project I chose to challenge myself and do a painting , I had decided to do one of the "skyline view" there is a park by my house that has great scenery at night and I visit it quite often. I decided to focus on the skyline view because earlier in the year I had moved to Clifton and although The house was a lot nicer than my last house I felt very out of place because I lived here in Jersey City my entire life. When I had returned back to Jersey City to stay with my Grandma I couldn't help but appreciate being home so much more. Another reason why I chose to center my project around the skyline is because at one point New York was the epicenter of the corona virus pandemic which not only changed my life but everyone else's lives in such an abrupt manner. I felt as though with the view of New York not only could I capture my apparition for the City landscape but also capture a something that a lot of others can relate to in some capacity as well. The artist that inspired me was Andrew Lenaghan was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1965. He received a BFA from Cornell University in 1987, and an MFA from Brooklyn College in 1989. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and is a professor of painting at the Pratt Institute. Lenaghan’s artwork display his sense of observation of the places and people around him. He too has a portrait of New York and its a very realistic portrait and it captures a view of New York so well and I wanted to try my hand at doing that as well. But once I had started painting on the canvas I stopped trying to convey directly what I was seeing directly but using what I was being as an avenue to have fun and be unique. I connected this project to the class readings cause one quote that stood out to me was " To photograph, is to capture" now although a painting is not a photograph I believe that it can also capture things in its own way. When it comes to the other artwork I did in this class I feel like what sets this one apart from the rest would be level of sentimental value it has to me. Coming back home from a place that made me unhappy was feeling that took the weight of the world on my shoulders and I feel as though this painting shows that because with a painting I went the furthest out of my comfort zone.

Selfie With Andy Warhol / Self Care

Andy Warhol 

Inspired by Andy Warhol, my self care routine consists of skin care and anything involving aromatherapy such as candles or lotions. After anxiety spiked once pandemic began, I began trying to find new and different ways to help cope through difficult moments, and skin care and self care has help ease many nerves. 

Quotes: 

"This is a turning point, a stage of development, and an observable defining moment when individuals come to think of themselves in a new way" ( The Art of Self Invention, Chapter 2, Pg 81)

"Every audience must think about whether the individuals's performance is convincing or not." ( The Art of Self Invention, Chapter 2, Pg. 93)

"At minimum the self is bifurcated, it has a double; there is the conscious and unconscious, private and public, civilized and base, good and bad, and we can create ourselves as well-rounded beings from the management of these seemingly opposed elements." (The Art of Self Invention, Chapter 3, Pg. 126)

"The idea that character and personality are both immanent in appearance still exerts a strong influence even though it is riddled with ambiguities" (The Art of Self Invention, Chapter 3, Pg. 129)

Seflie with Mickalene Thomas

Mickalene Thomas 

Kathleen DaSilva 

Quotes from John Berger

Chapters 2 & 3 

"Every one of her actions- whatever its direct purpose or motivation- is also read as an indication of how she would like to be treated" (Pg. 47)

"But this has been at the cost of a woman's self being split into two" (Pg. 46)

"But the essential way of seeing a women, the essential use to which their images are put, has not changed. Women are depicted in a quite different way from men" (Pg. 64)

Final project

being percieved 

For my final project I wanted to use conceptual portraits to convey how the male gaze is not only enacted under patriarchal social standards, but how I contribute to maintaining the male gaze. I was inspired by Ana Mendieta's use of close shot photography of herself, twisting her features to express a separation of her body from a social tool of race and gender. She sees her body more in relation to the land, a sense of origin and functionality. Both connect her to her Cuban-American roots. She embraces her femininity while exploring the boundaries of gender.

 Another artist that inspired my final piece was Mickalene Thomas, who uses rich colors, patterns, and textures to convey her relationship to femininity and race in her portraits of black women. I referenced her bold color tones and pattern choices when painting my own image on my face. My favorite of her works was Le déjeuner sur l’herbe: les trois femmes noires, which is a reference to a famous french painting depicting a naked woman having a picnic in the park with two fully clothed men. The scenes’ absurdity of one naked woman among clothed men is overlooked. She has become an object of the spectacle of the male gaze. Mickalene Thomas’ portrait depicts three black women looking back at the viewer as if interrupted, turning the gaze back onto the viewer. This portrait reminded me that just because I’m a woman aware of the standard of our visual and sexual society has objectified our bodies, does not make me exempt from also perceiving people through the male gaze.

How we see each other and ourselves in relation to each other ultimately controls our reality. Media plays into this by carefully controlling what and how we see within our society. This is known as the spectacle according to Guy Debord, a French philosopher. “The spectacle is not a collection of images, it is a social relation between people that is mediated between images.”(the society of the spectacle).

This absolutely includes myself and how I present my own femininity to be perceived by others. To convey this concept in my self portrait, I used pink and blue acrylic paint to represent male (gaze) and female (in the context of the male gaze) because the two colors are very universally used for gender. The base color is pink to show how I present myself in gender conforming femininity. (meaning I make myself appeal to the male gaze). My own internalized male gaze is shown in both the blue paint on my forehead where the mind's eye  is typically depicted, and surrounding my eyes, which I wanted to emphasize with lines and dots emanating around each eye.

When photographing myself, I ended up taking head on pictures to show both confronting myself and the viewer on our own contribution to the male gaze. In an interview Mickalene Thomas said “To see yourself and for others to see you is a form of validation and I'm interested in that very mysterious mystical line that is how we relate to each other in the world” (ARTINFO interview).

This final project is different from my first self portrait projects because I took a lot more liberties in presenting the themes in my pictures as my own rather than replicating the works shown. I believe that  I pushed myself not only in the class, but as an art major I was given the opportunity to explore more styles and techniques with less pressure of technicality. I feel more confident to push my own creative boundaries in future works.

ARTINFO interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2tJKAfyVhs 

The society of the spectacle pt. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsHtSPub3w8