Echoes of Infatuation: A Diptych Journey
I have a diptych piece that are movie posters. The ideas behind these posters are based on the epiphany I experienced this weekend. For as long as I remember I daydream of my crushes and imagine scenarios in my head as they are “the one”. As I haven't experienced being in a relationship, I often daydream of being in a healthy loving relationship. I had spoken to my childhood male friend, and with full blunt honesty, I become infatuated and fall in love easily by appearance, gestures and personality. This whole weekend was a torment of pain realizing this. I knew I needed to stop becoming infatuated.
I was inspired by artist Artemisia Gentileschi’s baroque paintings of strong and suffering women from myths, allegories, and biblical figures. I wanted to transfer Gentileschi’s style of emotional pain to my posters. The style of these posters derives from Dark surrealism and 70’s Dark Fantasy. The illustrative yet simple surreal style helped to capture exactly how I wanted to showcase the emotional quality. This has all derived from Cindy Sherman and Frida Kahlo as the primary sources of inspiration for exploring the self and female gaze they have gotten me this far to continue exploring the self. Artists need to take in, to process, to decipher, to separate from the noise and create things that are beautiful and impactful to the spirit (Soto). These posters are an embodiment of my thoughts and emotions. Making these posters motivated me to focus on inner healing and evoke my inner conflict onto a complete poster for the viewers to grasp in a visual context.
In Echoes of Longing, the girl slouches in despair as she is prepped as the bride-to-be and the person on top of the staircases is the mystery man whom I have fallen for. The ominous figure is a symbol of my infatuation with guys I am attracted to, with no knowledge of who this person is actually, and remains relevant as to who in the future this person could be. This style is dream-like and fantastical because girls were taught classical tales of princess finding their princes. This is capturing how all women and young girls envision love.
In Rising from Within, the second poster, provides a contrasting play against the first one, the young woman matures and focuses upon herself as part of the healing process. A bold move she makes, knowing being in disparity and stuck in her little world inside her mind wouldn’t benefit her. The ominous hooded figure placed behind the young woman means her focus is no longer concerned with finding her true love, love can come later in her life much stronger and better. The young woman focuses on herself. It’s about kind of capturing moments through various forms of documentation. And she takes all of these things to the world at large that might not be considered fine arts. She turns them into something intelligent, harrowing and emotional (Castillo). I showcase and want to state the process of pain takes time to heal in these pieces. I rely on color, saturation, shades & hues to intensify these deep complex emotions and work in congruence with the narrative of the story.
In this piece I wanted to focus on myself, I had gotten advice from my closest friends to focus on loving myself and my life. It will take time for me to move after pain, slowly but I will reach this phase of self-love and self-prioritization. These movie posters offer the female gaze of emotional pieces and the protagonist being the female we follow behind and see the narrative unfold. "These women are not metaphors, they are not waiting to be represented, rescued or destroyed. They are gloriously, catastrophically themselves, and we meet them on their own terms — as we so frequently meet each other — in stagy, embarrassing, endearing selfies launched into the world (Sehgal). This quote closely resembles to the narrative of my posters, I use these women to self-express and embody my thoughts however these women are also to be viewed as their own individual self-experiencing the hurdles of life. In both posters, the young woman serves inspiration and hope emanating through their proud individuality. Just as living beings provides me determination, as these emotions we experience are part of the human experience.
Works Cited
Soto, Edra. “Performance, Pedagogy, and Philosophy.” Hispanic Executive, 1 July 2022, hispanicexecutive.com/shaun-leonardo.
Castillo, Monica. “Overlooked No More: Ana Mendieta, a Cuban Artist Who Pushed Boundaries.” The New York Times, 5 Oct. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/obituaries/ana-mendieta-overlooked.html.
Sehgal, Parul. “The Ugly Beauty of Cindy Sherman’s Instagram Selfies.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 Oct. 2018, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/05/magazine/instagram-cindy-sherman-ugly-beauty.html.
No comments:
Post a Comment