The theme for this project continues to the last one. We the People was about the American people coming together to move forward and heal; however, things did not go as we expected. There was stillness in the air, some places were silent despite being noisy during the day, and we all felt that despair that morning. We had our moment to grieve and now we must continue fighting for our rights twice as hard. The road ahead will be challenging but since when has it been easy? People in the past shed blood, sweat, and tears to get their rights, to be apathetic during these times means their sacrifice was all for nothing. We are allowed to be scared but we must do what we can in big or small ways.
I wanted my project to be colorful to represent hope and the present while having a black-and-white theme to symbolize the protests that happened in the past. The sunflower represents hope, and the dandelions are the wishes of the people who risked everything to fight for our rights. Finding quotes that resonate with my art is difficult but in Shaun Leonardo’s interview he mentioned something that caught my attention, “And the result was a series of narratives where these participants spoke about how they believed freedom was afforded, or not, but also about the ways in which we embody those narratives”. Is our freedom to choose for ourselves limited? For many people in different states, it may seem that way for various reasons. But we have to remind ourselves that America has been fighting for freedom for a long time and overcame many obstacles, this is just a setback.
I was inspired by Frida Kahlo's colorful self-portrait, The Frame, and Hannah Hooch’s artwork for the DADA movement. I wanted to create something colorful so black and white photos could pop up more. Frida Kahlo has many colorful self-portraits; I was always drawn to the ones where she wears flowers. It's one of my main inspirations when creating different artworks. For Hannah Hooch, her DADA collage may look out of place, but the placement and cut-outs were carefully thought out to protest the regime at the time. “Her work often focused on the situation in Weimer Germany from a woman’s perspective, combining political commentary, gender issues, questions of modernity and a critique of the bourgeoise” What is Dada (2:26 -2:33). People have different ways of coping during hard times, it may look like they have gotten over it but to make our next course of action we must move on.
I
wouldn’t call this an inspiration, but Wangechi Mutu’s artwork gave me an idea
of how to arrange the cut-outs and add to it. Mutu is known for her “gorgeously
grotesque creatures that range from amusingly freakish to macabre. Using ink
and collage on Mylar or paper, she combines humans, animals, and machines in
seamless and commanding compositions full of small moments of discovery and
random elements that may betray only an oblique relation to the overall image”.
This art style doesn’t suit me however I learned to rearrange and adjust the
cut-out to make it seem like one large group representing basic human rights. I
decided to add a picture of myself, not exactly representing me but my
generation. We are young yet the future seems so bleak, we want to hide but we
have to pull ourselves together to make it better.
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