"Ideas come from life"(La Force), as Marina Abramovic explained. Inspired by Surrealist and Dadaist collages, I've created a self portrait collage that reflects upon my identity within the confines of contemporary media. The source image I utilized are technically "contemporary media", but I repurpose these source images to create a collage that addresses my personal existence within the American contemporary media. Coming from an immigrant household, the idea of America as a grandeur for its progressiveness in culture and society permeated the thoughts of my family. For a country known as the land of the free, I felt anything but. America's contemporary media actively shapes what is considered the norm in terms of our identity, society, or culture. Yet, just a peak through the blinds of marketing and bravado allows us to realize how shallow and frivolous the content that is presented to us on the daily.
The inspiration for my collage comes from Hannah Höch and Mickalene Thomas' works. Höch expressed that "Photomontage could be used not merely to produce things heavy with political meaning . . . but . . . one could also regard it as a means of self-expression and eventually arrive at purely aesthetic works”(Cash). I aligned myself with this approach to collaging by utilizing images that I was drawn to. Furthermore, I was inspired my Thomas' approach to material as she began her practice by using affordable craft supplies due to financial hardship as a college student. Due to this situation, she used the supplies she had on hand and create a new approach to collaging which is something I seek to do within my works. I decided to use paint to create marks to create an atmosphere that complements the images I have selected.
Drawing reference to Nicholas Mirzoeff on seeing, he explained "Seeing the world is not about how we see but about what we make of what we see. We put together an understanding of the world that makes sense from what we already know or think we know"(Mirzoeff). With this in mind, I shifted through physical contemporary media such as magazines and newspapers to collect images that display an essence of who I am as a person and juxtaposing it with fragments of images that captures the symbiotic relationship between contemporary media and it's consumers, myself included.
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| Paradise is here.. America |
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| The Father, Hannah Höch (1920) |
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| Qusuquzah Lounging with Pink + Black Flower, Mickalene Thomas (2016) |
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