African Queen

     For my self-portrait final project, I decided to make myself the subject. I was inspired by a couple of artists while designing my painting. First I would say Frida Kahlo played a role in me using myself as the subject twice, first for the midterm and now for the final. Frida Kahlo always uses her face in her paintings and paints herself in different eras of her life. Cindy Sherman is another influence when it comes to me using my face as the subject. Cindy Sherman plays around with photography and always captures herself dressed up or disguised as a character or portraying something going on in society. Lastly, Mickalene Thomas was another amazing artist who inspired me to use my face as the subject of my painting. Mickalene's paintings represent the unrepresented African American women when it comes to art, being that I am an African American woman, why not use myself. The only difference between me and Mickalene's subject is the fact that she paints women in her life that are important to her that represents her in her painting.

Kehinde Wiley inspired my outfit, hair, and background in this painting. Kehinde Wiley's absent father is from West Africa, so he tends to incorporate his roots in his paintings in search of his identity. Both of my parents are from West Africa but I still feel a disconnect from my background and roots being that I never actually been to Nigeria. I understand the language my parents speak but cannot actually speak it myself, so to relate to someone who is from where I am from will be hard. The media can affect identity when it comes to this issue because the trend is something everybody always wants to follow. So if your culture was not popular, your interest was not there when it comes to learning and finding out more about it. I wanted to incorporate African prints to bring out my African roots, I did this by cutting up a piece of cloth called Ankara and gluing it onto the paintings. The roots and vibrant background was also inspired by Kehinde Wiley.

     

     The three symbols I chose was my mom, a grad cap, and a phoenix. I chose my mom because she is my everything, she keeps me on track and is always there whenever I need her. I added a grad cap to represent my journey of undergrad and speak my graduation to existence especially coming off of probation and using my last semester two semesters to prove to myself that I can push through. The phoenix represents me starting a new chapter of being more aware and conscious of my actions.