Construction of Eye-Dentity

Constructing an identity has been apart of history since the beginning of time. Identity is how the outside world can construct a view, opinion, judgement, and perspective about you. We identify in the lens of others since our birth. When we are born, our parents are there to view us as an angel child, the typical parents view their new born has their most perfect creation. The parents of a newborn will contact their relatives, telling them how beautiful their child is already before the baby can speak. The Doctors go through their medical evaluation for the baby, and to the doctor and his associates, the baby identifies based on the processes like his APGAR score, the babies health, weight and physical condition. We were given identities before we could even speak and be conscious.
 
For my midterm project I talked about multiple identities that define me. Similar to our parents and doctors creating identities for us, when we grow older we naturally start to create identities that others will interpret of us. Midterm project used my identity of ethnicity. As I grew older, I realized people created an identity of me based of my ethnicity. I was an African American and because of that, they automatically assumed I fit in certain standards. My skin color was related to being too dark for social acceptance from few people.

“To participate in society we cultivate a public persona, a manner of being in the world that works to sustain our engagements with others.” (Finkelstein). When I visited the Montclair Museum I learned about multiple artists who used their identity for empowerment. According to Finkelstein, our identities create and maintain our engagement with other's. I got a chance to visit the Montclair Museum where a artists where able to use their identity to engage with the art world, political power and race through their modern day and American artwork. These artists are some recognizable artists of the 21st century which allows me to view their artwork and gain new ideas to construct my final project through their ideas of identity.

This artwork is by Jefferey Gibson. I thought it was unique how he incorporated his heritage into his abstract sculptures, paintings and prints according to his profile description at the Montclair Museum.
 I really enjoyed checking out his art piece because his identity is empowered in a broad spectrum. The concepts in his artwork of Land Spirit and Power reach a wide range of traditional influence. The concept he uses to describe this is intertribal aesthetic. This was his approach to the native and American traditions that he targeted to influence through his work. I found this inspirational because I hate feeling pigeon held to a topic, Gibsons identity was broad.


My next artwork I saw that was influential was by Will Barnet. I enjoyed checking out this artwork because it conveyed a way of explaining identity through an emotional state of a person. When I was younger I was identified as quiet and self reserved. As I got older I was identified through my horoscope as emotional. These emotions of identity can be pictured and presented. Which is another Idea, Emily Dickinson is an American author who was known to be depicted as thoughtful, insightful and dark. Her style of writing and authoring was a form of identity that invoked artwork. This gives me the idea of identity through emotion, I could construct a art that’ll show emotion through my identity.


Carrie Mae Weems portrait untitled was another astonishing piece that I found to be very interesting. This picture is organized to show the true nature of freed slaves. I like it because it invokes African American history and empowerment. The identity he conveyed was a runaway slaves who unified and stayed together after they were freed. This gives me the identity of power in unity. I could replicate this concept by creating an artwork that is embodied of togetherness in the African American Community.This identity could be shown in many ways of family, freeness and even being rebellious.