“The selfie resonates not because it is new, but because it expresses, develops, expands, and intensifies the long history of the self-portrait.”
- Nicholas Mirzoeff, How To See The World
The selfie is an evolved form of the self-portrait. Cameras and modern editing software have allowed people to get more creative with self-portraiture.
“The selfie depicts the drama of our own daily performance of ourselves in tension with our inner emotions that may or may not be expressed as we wish.”
- Nicholas Mirzoeff, How To See The World
Taking a selfie can capture a moment or feeling we experienced. Sometimes when I look back at my selfies, I can see the emotion on my face. When I look at pictures of myself I can tell when I am truly happy vs. faking it. To others, I may look happy in all of them because I’m smiling but I can remember how I truly felt when I took that photo.
“‘Given the opportunity, if the king gets off that stool, she’s ready to go,’ Ms. Mutu adds. ‘The work of these women is immense. The regard for them is not.’ That complicated social position is reflected in the caryatids’ striking discs, which relate back to lip plates and crowns, and heavy earrings. Along with filed teeth and scarification, they can cause women substantial pain. The status they confer is costly in more ways than one.”
- Nancy Princenthal, Wangechi Mutu: A New Face for the Met
The meaning behind her caryatids is very interesting. In this article, Mutu explained that African examples of caryatids were found in staffs and on royal stools, symbolically holding the weight of the king or, the royalty of their culture. I’m happy she had the opportunity to make large Afrofuturist caryatids and place them on the outside of the Met. She gave these female figures the recognition they deserved. It’s really crazy how tribal women go to extremes to look like achieve beauty ideals. I can’t imagine the physical pain they put themselves through.
“While Dr. Rodney, who has written extensively about institutional efforts to enhance community involvement, is enthusiastic about introducing the facade program with a female artist of color, he notes that her sculptures will be “literally outside the museum — that gives me a bit of pause.”
The article then goes into how Dr. Rodney is weary of the Met’s progress toward diversity. I can understand that he thinks that if her work is placed outside of the museum sends the message that she doesn’t belong inside the museum. Her work as a black female artist is still considered separate and different from everything inside the museum. It would be different if her caryatids were on the outside and she, or another female black artist, had an exhibit inside the Met. That would be a great recognition and celebration of their work. The African and Oceania wing of the Met is still closed and will be until 2025. I would hope they bring her art back to the Met to celebrate its reopening.
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| Denise Abadies, Hair, 2023 |
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| Denise Abadies, Hair, 2023 |
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| Denise Abadies, Hair, 2023 |
My self-portrait collage is inspired by Hannah Hoch and Mickalene Thomas. I loved how Hoch was inventive and skillful in the placement of images in her collage work. Mickalene Thomas was inspiring to me because she used a lot of patterns and shapes to complement her subjects. When I was planning this project I knew I wanted my face in it and I wanted my hair to be the focal point. I picked a photo of myself, and I don’t like taking selfies so in the photo I’m looking away. My hair is made of black tissue paper and black glittery tulle. I wanted my hair to have texture and I chose the glittery tulle because I wanted it to pop and give my hair depth. I chose my hair as the focal point because growing up I became known as the girl with the long black straight beautiful hair. Which I’m not mad about but, I faced a lot of scrutiny (mostly from my parents, aunts, female teachers, etc.) about the upkeep of my hair. Even though I was blessed with straight hair, keeping it long is a lot of hard work and pain.
Constantly getting my hair caught on things and the painful tugging/brushing knots out of my hair before school feels like a rite of passage. Not to mention body hair growth in other areas after puberty. In middle school, I was bullied when I had leg hair and my mom wouldn’t allow me to shave my legs yet. Today, I remove my upper lip/hair/underarm hair when I remember. But most of the time I grow my hair out because I just don’t care anymore. When I have peach fuzz or underarm growth I get comments that are borderline insults from people in my life. They ask me why I don’t “take care of it,” or it looks gross. In high school, and sometimes today, hearing those comments make me think, “People are commenting on it so I have to get my stache waxed,” but then I remember that I’m not the kind of person who worries about what other people think about me.
I just really don’t understand why women with body hair are gross but men with body hair are natural. It’s funny how people love the hair on my head but anywhere else it looks gross. Every hair on our bodies should be celebrated. Growing hair is a healthy thing our bodies do and if it doesn’t then that means something is wrong. The policing of women’s body hair, and women’s bodies in general, has got to stop.
“Thomas’s jazzy photomontages of women’s limbs and facial features can be construed as commentary on how female bodies are brutally picked apart in contemporary visual culture.”
-Carey Dunne, The Photographed, Collaged, and Painted Muses of Mickalene Thomas, 2016
When I constructed this project, I had random pieces of patterns I painted for another class and a magazine. I decided to go with images over words because again I wanted my hair to be the focal point. I didn’t have a vision for the background, I just started cutting patterns or images that I liked. I gravitated toward the woman with binoculars and placed her on the upper left side because I felt like it emphasized the feeling of being watched/policed. And the expression on my face works because it looks like I feel uneasy, or suspicious of something/someone.
“Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.”
- John Berger, Ways of Seeing
I had a lot of fun creating this collage. I haven’t made many collages since I was in elementary school but I have a new appreciation for collage art. I was really inspired by the women we studied in class. The meaning behind Hannah Hoch and Mickalene Thomas’ work is really complex and has so many layers. I enjoyed discussing them in class. I feel like learning about them and listening to their interviews has given me a better understanding of the themes in their art. It makes me look at their art and my art in a different way. It’s an interesting thing-- understanding people makes us perceive art differently.
“[Heffernan] credits Sherman with ‘giving me permission to dig deeper and trust what I would find there. It was like she was telling us secrets at a slumber party and we all got more wild and indiscreet along with her.’”
- Julie Heffernan, The Cindy Sherman Effect by Phoebe Hoban
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| Hannah Höch, Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919 |
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| Mickalene Thomas, Din, une très belle négresse 1, 2012 |
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| Mickalene Thomas, Portrait of Solange Thinking About You, 2013 |
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