Don’t look now

The artwork I choose is made by Barbara Kruger. The subject of her painting is “Don’t look now”. In herpainting, a woman put her hand over her eyes, and she looks like refuse to see something. The reason why I choose this painting is that I find there’s some similar things between the women in the picture and me. If the subject of my midterm self-portrait is focus on the feeling of the past, the subject of my final self-portrait is my expectations for the future. 

My self-portrait is a kind of collage. All the components of it are cut from magazines. The woman stands on the stairs. She looks well-dressed and confidence, but she refuses to look herself in the mirror. There are several words in my self-portrait: “The Escape” and “Don’t look now”. The spectacle is the social phenomena which affect us. As Joanne Finkelstein quoted In “Art of Self Invention”, Joanne Finkelstein said that “To participate in society, we cultivate a public persona, a manner of being in the world that works to sustain our engagements with others…the ubiquity of deception in popular culture is an invitation to consider the possibility that behind the surface of appearances these are other realities.”(Page 2) The woman in my self-portrait is well-dressed because she wants to package herself and recognized by other people. If people only judge her from her exterior, she must be a confident person with a happy life. "Considered in its own terms, the spectacle is an affirmation of appearances and an identification of all human social life with appearances.” It is what Guy Debord quoted from the theory of "the Spectacle. The spectacle influences our behavior. The result could be either positive or negative. In my mind, the media has a negative influence on us rather than the positive side. Such as we want to buy a bag because of one advertisement, but we don’t really need that. It is impulse buying and sometimes we just want to compare ourselves with others in this way. People are performing an ideal life influenced by society. My project addresses the spectacle by illustrating that if we ignore the influence of the social media and ignore the real need from our heart, we will always just pretend to have a great life and never achieve the real happiness. She creates a perfect external image for herself, but why she’s still refuses to look at herself and wants to escape? 

Perhaps we never know ourselves. The woman refuses to see herself in the mirror because she’s dissatisfied with herself. She pretends her life is great is because she’s not that happy. The thing that people pretend they have is always the thing that they lack most. She wants to escape the life she has and intends to create a new life page. However, except the change of exterior, she doesn’t do anything to make her heart happy, that’s the reason why she wants to escape. “Don’t look now” shows the women’s expectations for the future. People always look forward to the future and forget the present. We always think that everything will be better in the future, but we refuse to make any changes now. What we forget is the present is the future of the past. Can we today fulfill the expectations of we yesterday? There are always so many tomorrows. If we don’t take any action, we could only stamp on the same ground and wait for tomorrow. This is what my life is like. I want to tell myself that I should faceup to my heart and look the real me in the mirror. Look it now instead of waiting. At least I should be better than yesterday.