The way we see it

The subject of my project is me and myself fighting society’s norms. It shows myself and other objects that replace certain parts of my body, mind and thoughts. There’s different fruits, sceneries, flowers and colors to show the reality of life and the gender norms placed on society. I changed some body parts to show that anything can be seen as normal if we allow ourselves to not look at the “sceptical”. I cut out my body parts such as head, arms, hands and legs to show a different way women can be seen. Also, I show myself with straight hair and natural hair to portray either way to wear hair is beautiful. I use a lot of green because it depicts nature, growth, renewal and rebirth of my thoughts, the way I see the world and myself. I wrapped some sides in yarn to show positive changes that I made with myself and my place in society. Any other funky fabrics and glitter I used was just to add some life and color. 

The choices I made to insert certain fruits and objects in replacement of the human body was to show the way society wants things to how they can really be. I knew exactly the parts of the body I wanted to portray such as female arms replaced with male arms that are muscular. My choice to do this is to show that having muscular arms and stepping out of gender norms is completely okay. The choices I made with my piece were meant to portray two different worlds. The process of deciding how I wanted to show society norms and the reality of it was complicated to me. I knew at first I wanted to make a collage of body parts and replace them with different unique or fun objects. I needed to have a deeper meaning and connect this to something. Since we have been talking about the spectacle I thought why not show how people expect things to look to how they can really look despite societal norms. I knew I wanted pictures of myself to show how I felt about my hair and what society thought of the “fro”. So I started off with printing out pictures in black and white as well as colors. I found different fabrics and textured stuff to put around the pictures to create some life to it. Plus I love a funky feel to my artwork. I made the decision to keep some pictures in black and white so the viewer can feel that there are two different themes and meanings to the piece. To me I would categorize my work as a collage being as though I took different images and pieces making them into one thing. I would compare my work to Miklane Thomas. She has influenced me throughout this entire course and was also my muse for my midterm project as well. Her work shows real women with their own unique history, beauty and background. She works to diversify the representations of black women in art. 

This self portrait should convey the idea of stepping out of gender norms. It should convey that anything can be normal if we don’t think about societies views on it. Some differences between my first self portrait and this one is the collage feel to it. My first portrait was based on my nature hair while this project is based on societal norms. I do incorporate a part of my hair that has to do with how people think females should wear their hair. I feel more confident with this project as well. I was influenced to change the direction of my project because of the topic of the “skeptical” that we have been discussing in class. 

Media influences identity and self presentation by showing us the most popular items or things used in society today. They spam us with good looking models and expensive items. This allows us to feel like we need them or need to look like what media shows us. If we see a famous person wear something we like we’re more obligated to get it because we see it on someone popular. Media allows people to see what people have and how people act. We’re either influenced by it or we aren’t. The spectacle is the result of capitalism since we are continually expanding new items and taking a stab at the most recent trends. The spectacle is something that everyone is chasing to achieve which constructs their identity. My project is shaped around the spectacle and how we see ourselves with was it deemed normal. I wanted to show that we don’t need to have straight hair or wear certain things. We can be ourselves and still feel great.