Week 6 - Window On The World

Window On The World Collage

For my collage project this week, I wanted to incorporate my heritage and own personal artwork into a surrealist collage. I went to art school when I was younger, and my art teacher always talked about Salvador Dalí and how his artwork was alluring and had a deeper meaning in each painting. I wanted to include him somewhere somehow, so I decided to use his famous mustache in my collage. “Since I don't smoke, I decided to grow a mustache - it is better for the health. However, I always carried a jewel-studded cigarette case in which, instead of tobacco, were carefully placed several mustaches, Adolphe Menjou style. I offered them politely to my friends: "Mustache? Mustache? Mustache?" Nobody dared to touch them. This was my test regarding the sacred aspect of mustaches.” I plan to incorporate Dalí in future works, where I can get bigger inspiration from his surrealism. (Salvador Dalí)

The background of my collage is actually a painting that I painted from a photograph my sister took from the balcony of our hotel room of the Havana sunset when we were in Cuba in July 2012. Since this is a self-portrait project, I wanted to not only include my heritage but also my own artwork. I was born here in the United States, but am of Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Chilean descent. I wanted to include Cuba, as well as Puerto Rico in the eyes of the man there because the eyes are the window into the soul. My culture is very important to me and I love integrating it into my projects. “Nowadays, with digital printing, it's so easy to make everything perfect, which is not always a good idea. Sometimes the mistakes are really what make a piece.” (Cindy Sherman)

Speaking of the man at the face of my collage, I got heavy inspiration from Cindy Sherman herself. The image that inspired me was a self-portrait she posted on her Instagram on October 7th, 2018. It is untitled. In my portrait, the left eye is an eye filled with the Cuban flag and the right eye is an eye filled with the Puerto Rican flag. Beneath shows a shirt-like piece of clothing with the American flag opening to show the Chilean flag. Because I was born here in America, it doesn't mean that I ignore where I come from and I wanted to show that in this collage. While I am an American by birth, my heart and soul are my Hispanic heritage. I feel this demonstrates how culture was so important to someone like Danielle Scott, and how she wanted to go back and find her roots. We focus too much on social media and less on talking to our families to find out about our backgrounds and our heritage which is such a major part of forming who we are. “Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.” (Frida Kahlo) My grandparents left everything in their countries behind to come to the United States. With every generation after them, it is so important not to lose that part of our identity.

Even though it has deep meaning for me, I tried to keep the overall appearance of my collage simple because while there are several different images cut out to create my self-portrait, I wanted the main focus to be on my own painting as the background. 

Window On The World

Untitled Self Portrait Selfie
By Cindy Sherman

Wangechi Muttu Quotes

"Among her sources of inspiration is a modest Congolese “prestige stool” in the Met’s collection that Ms. Mutu admires for its earthiness — the figure’s knees are on the ground, rather than a pedestal — and for the eroticism of her parted thighs. Generally she favors sensuality in her own work, although for the Met she opted for figures that are resolutely chaste."

"While art by indigenous Americans was donated to the museum soon after its 1870 founding, by 1911 it had come to an agreement with the Natural History Museum that “primitive works of art” by “prehistoric peoples” would go across the park; the Met would focus thereafter on the Mediterranean world, Asia and the European tradition. And so things remained until 1969, when the museum began showing art from Africa, Oceania and Native America."

How To See the World Response

"The numbers are astonishing: three hundred hours of YouTube videos are uploaded every minute. Six billion hours of videos are watched every month on the site, one hour for every person on Earth. The 18-34 age group watches more YouTube than cable television. (And remember that YouTube was only created in 2005.) Every two minutes, Americans alone take more photographs than were made in the entire nineteenth century."

"Because the selfie draws on the history of the self-portrait, it will also allow us to explore the creation of the academic discipline of visual culture that emerged around 1990. How we see ourselves leads to the question of how we see, and the remarkable insights of neuroscience."

Reading this chapter by Mirzoeff was really interesting and these statistics really put a lot of things into perspective. Everyone is always on the phone and disconnected from society that not having our phones next to us sets in panic attacks for a lot of people. We have advanced in technology so much throughout these past few years and we're only going to get more technologically advanced.