Roots (part 2)

I was inspired by Cindy Sherman and Frida Kahlo to make the subject of my image myself. Cindy took many pictures of herself and portrayed many characters while Frida painted herself in the many stages of her life. My self-portrait is of myself, it is more of a self-identity portrait. I painted a picture I took not too long ago for Nigerian Independence day. In the painting, I am holding a Nigerian flag, which is where I am from. I chose to include the Nigerian flag because it plays a big part in who I am as a person when it comes to what I eat, the type of music I listen to and how I was raised. I chose a solid purple background to add color to my piece, which was inspired by Amy Sherald, in all her self-portraits she chooses a vibrant color for the background, which is kind of her signature. Purple is also my favorite color. The glitter and flowers I added to the painting was inspired by Mickalence Thomas, her artwork features beautiful black women and she always adds rhinestones to her pieces as her signature.

Inside Out

 

The subject of my image is the inner me and what makes up my life as a whole. The content includes a deconstructed football that opens up to reveal my inner soccer mom as my friends cheerleader and my leadership roles played at Rutgers. The football represents the sports podcast(SDU Media) that I create week in and week out with my friends and my deep love for the sport. Coming out of the football is one of my first hijabs(religious head wear) to represent my spirituality and religious identity. The box under the football has a messy collage of car magazine pieces to represent my messy/hard decision making on going to college or trade school which was a tough choice. Under that box is another covered in content from the student run newspaper, (The Observer), where I am now the Executive Editor. On that bigger box is a Quran(holy text) and the bookmark is placed on the chapter named Surah Maryam. My older sibling and I are estranged but that is her name and so it means a lot for me to read the verses and remember good memories. 

The composition took a long time to come up with because I wanted to formulate something that reflected me and looking into what I am made of was very intriguing because I found out so many new things. I think the image conveys my true self deconstructed to the viewers. I was inspired my Frida Kahlo's collage style along with Mickalene Thomas as they used the most meaningful things to create how they wanted to be seen. I also liked how Andy Warhol used things that were normal to create his art work which is what I tried to do; make this relatable. 

This project represents me in a whole new light because of the way it reflects me opening up to the world. Some parts such as the holy text and the headscarf are very relatable for some but for others it allows a conversation to begin. 

Midterm

For my midterm I wanted my self portrait to be something that can represent my interests for the most part. For the painting in the back I wanted to go for something with a creepy vibe using eyes and a lot of driving of the character in the back but use a very bright and warm color palette to reflect my personality a bit. I see myself as being someone who is energetic at times and always wanting to do something or go somewhere and I felt that the bright color palette would help reflect that energetic feeling. The dripping and eyes around the main painting and the side paintings give off a more dark mood and feel to it which represents my interest into dark things like horror and gore and such but I use a lot of soft colors within it to show that along with those types of interests I do like soft and bright stuff. I drew some inspiration from Mickalene Thomas from how she uses rhinestones in her work as craft tools to make her works pop out and instead decided to use glitter, googly eyes, and legos as tools to use within my art, I like the use of glitter in it because I like the sparkle it gives off and it adds a lot to the paintings. The piece with the legos represents how I view life, its unexpected and always changing but you have the power to change it just as much as you have the power to move the legos and change.

THIS IS ME IN ME

The idea behind my project is to give a summary of my life by representing my life where I come from, my passion everything is full of multiple flavors of my homeland Nigeria. 
I included pictures of the most important people in my life, I can be myself around them and a lot of time I am who I am because of them. Everything I accomplished is thanks to my family specially my mother and my little sister who still live back home and there’s a few pictures of me and my best friends who are more like my brothers they know from inside out.... This collage represents who I am and everything I love. I fell in love with photography long time ago I like to capture everything like priceless moments and I want people to see the best things about themselves, each picture tell a story so its so With my pictures I captured the world on my own way. I been into art that’s why there are a few pictures of me in school in Nigerian doing some activities 
And as you can see there’s a lot of pictures of me alone taking pictures because that’s how I can really show my love for photography. When I was looking for inspiration for my collage, I came across a lot different examples but all seemed to plain so I wanted to do a drawing but I think the collage it’s like a short documentary of my life. 

My collage might be short and just about me but I think that most people can relate to how the people they care about and the things they love the most shape them in the people they are now.

Midterm

  The subject of the image refers to "Link", and the tremendous tree is what I want the audience to focus on. The picture will actually start from the right-hand side, where the trunk and the leave looks healthy, but after pollution that human beings produce, it makes the color of the trunks grow darker, and the leaves on the tree are actually not that healthy, and by the end, the tree died and the leaves initially falling down from the tree. In addition, the self-portrait that I placed in the middle of the tree represents "Dead and Alive", and the string is what allows me to associate with nature, which is the tree, essentially became lesser as the tree loses its vitality. As a matter of fact,  I was inspired by the artist Ana Mendieta, specifically her land art, such as Siluetas, and she was eager to find the connection between her and the earth, just like the relationship between her and her family,and some of her work carved and shaped herself into the nature  in order to show how she was connected to the nature, which also her family. As a result, I sympathize with her about how close we are with nature, and we actually belong to nature, thus killing nature eventually leads us to death. For instance, polluting the environment, like cutting down trees, is the same as taking our life, because we are interdependent with nature, and when it died we died. What I intend to convey to the audience is the idea of protecting nature or more like a warning, and this is also why I made this artwork. Since there are more and more industries require wood, therefore they cut down trees and used it as a tool to manufacture things that improve people's life standard, but what they doing is actually killing themselves, because we are so connected with nature, so protect nature equal to protect ourselves, and bring a better future life, also vice versa. One of the techniques that I deployed is color gradient, the color of the tree's trunk and leaves are gradually changing from a healthy one to unhealthy, and I also utilized the sharp contrast of color within my self-image, the dark one stands for death, whereas the one with color stands for alive. Moreover, I also decrease the number of leaves and the strings for the sake of exhibiting our loss of connection with nature. This project represents me because I know there is a balance with nature and human, you pay what you take, and you cannot just take it for free, especially when you killing something, like taking trees'life, and you will finally pay back with your own life, and I RESPECT THE balance with nature, therefore this work represents my mindset on balancing of lives.

Midterm

    The subject of my self-portrait is “Rising From the Ashes”. I bring the idea from Frida Kahlo’s painting- “Girl with Death Mask”. In her painting, four years old Frida was wearing a skull mask. This kind of mask is a tradition at the annual Mexican Festival “Day of the Dead” where death is celebrated instead of mourned. The yellow flower in her hand represents the flowers Mexicans put on the grave during the festival. She stands on an empty field under a gloomy sky all by herself. Both masks the painting seems not appropriate for the innocent little girl and are the symbols of the cruelty of her destiny. Most elements in my self-portrait are from one magazine. The two masks are download and print from PicsArt. Apart from the flower put on the grave, I add a bunch of flowers next to the girl. These flowers are sent to the girl and wants to encourage her to face the problems in lives positively. Everyone has so many challenges in their lives, but there’s always someone who has suffer more than us. The flowers give the girl toughness and courage to face the negative things in her life. Finally, Darkness will pass and dawn will come.

    The reason why I use this subject is that 2019 is a hard year for me. The major thing isn’t how many problems our life has, but our attitude towards problems. Life is always good in the eyes of optimistic people.

   

Game of Life

For my midterm, I decided to take a bunch of things that have impacted my life and put them together. The subject of my project is me. As a child, I used to play Tetris and decided to have myself as the subject of the Tetris game. The idea of Tetris is to continuously put the blocks together so that they fit and make a whole box. The blocks for my self portrait are my building blocks of life. Things that have impacted me or things I simply have come to love and have shaped me as a person. The game is incomplete because just as the game isn’t over, neither is my life. I am not a finished product and I am continuing to put the building blocks of my life together. This project represents constantly building up yourself and changing as a person, adding to your life, and growing. I used different objects and images in my life to portray those things that have impacted me as a whole. Images of my friends and family are major staples of my life. Images of things I enjoy like Star Wars, my favorite football team, and favorite album are just intricate pieces of my life that I love. All together, these things make up who I am as a person.