Representation

In looking into ways of representing self, my final project became a self portrait with both screen printed and collage images as a way or representing self and pieces of identity. The final piece is 30 x 22 in on watercolor paper. Although I didn’t paint on the surface of the paper, I was interested in the visual quality of the texture and to see how it would work with screen printing ink.

I chose to explore the development of identity. This is a subject that we do a lot of work and training around in my job with diversity programs at the U. I’m curious about what factors influence people in developing their identity, particularly outside of their family and people around them. I chose to use myself and to think about the things that have influenced me, mostly external factors of my immediate life. In my initial planning, I began thinking what factors would have caused others to develop differently than myself, and then even more so, what factors would have influenced myself and two siblings to have developed completely different identities even though we grew up in the same family.

In the end, I have only represented myself, as I had no way of knowing what could have affected my siblings without asking them. I found that even representing my own identity was a challenge. What I found as I collected images and started putting them together was that I had both perceived and real identity represented, as well as images that represented things I no longer affiliated with my identity but I know had a large impact in the way I developed, for example, Christian religion. I chose to use magazine collage as the medium for representing my identity. I chose it particularly because I love the visual quality, the gloss and the color. I limited myself only to magazines for the most part to challenge myself to find ways to represent pieces that I may not have an exact image for, and because I wanted the surface to be consistent.

Finally, I decided to organize the pieces into a figure, as a way of tying it back/relating it, to the screen printed figure of me cutting and placing pieces on the body. I also chose to offset a magenta ink on the figure of myself to echo the magenta in the head of the collaged figure. To create the figure, I used a picture of Anne Hathaway to line up the pieces in an attempt to make it a bit more proportional, although this does project the image of my body as one displayed by the media, which I guess is fair.

I’m hoping that these two figures connect to the viewer as being one in the same, but I’m really not sure if it completely does. I also added small colored circles around the figures as a way of trying to tie them together as well as to try to create a sense of energy and movement. It’s also hard to say how the images will relate to the viewer and how they will choose to interpret them.

Emily