Bridge 1 Part 1

For Bridge 1 Part 1 assignment, I took images based on my theme: identity and analyzed the different elements and principles of art and design. The images that I’ve used came from different sources; image 1, 2, 3 from the internet, image 4 and 5 taken in the street of Manhattan, and image 6 and 7 from the visit to MET. I used Photoshop to take apart and construct the pieces of the images together.

  1.  This is a poster of a 2003 American thriller movie, Identity, which shows a story about 10 split identities of a convict, Malcolm Rivers. Although the movie intrigued me, I was especially drawn by the poster showing what seems like four different people rooting from a face of a single person drawn on the hand. I think this poster says a lot about our identity. We often change according to the situation, the environment, and the circumstance we are placed in. For instance, the way I act in a school classroom is way different from the way I am in front of a group of friends. According to Neil MacKinnon, “most people might have around 700 or so identities in their identity sets.”
    1.  https://news.uoguelph.ca/2010/06/how-many-identities-do-you-have/
  2.  This is actually two images that I took from the internet to combine into one single image. It was rather inspired by my personal background of being Korean-American. One side of the image shows food of the western world while the other side shows a food from my origin country, Korean. I have recently come conscious of the deeper meaning and purpose of the hyphenated American title. According to Stanley Renshon, hyphenating their origin identity and American allows immigrants to easily settle into the new environment while acknowledging who they are. However, I’ve noticed that although the used of hyphenation allows me to be both Korean and American, but at the same time it also prevents me from being purely just Korean or purely just American. I’ve chosen the interconnection of these two images because I believe that it depicts the way of being a partial of two different cultures.
    1. https://cis.org/Renshon/Value-Hyphenated-Identity
  3.  This is an image I took around Chinatown in Manhattan. I liked the way it shows a traditional Chinese style architecture in the middle of city of New York. Surrounded by modern western buildings, it is located not inside Chinatown, but just outside of Chinatown, making it hard to justify whether it is part of Chinatown or not. I was intrigued by not only the style of architecture, but also the location as it shows the idea of disconnection and feeling like a foreigner as an immigrant, similar to the idea of the image 2. Furthermore, this image reminded me of the picture of a Korean architecture placed in the street of London.
    1. https://www.dezeen.com/2018/09/26/bridging-home-london-korean-house-do-ho-suh/
  4.  I chose this image from the internet because it depicts the idea of being lost in the terms of finding identity. The challenge of finding our identity and defining who we are is something we all have to struggle, especially in the teen years, and even throughout adulthood. We are constantly clashed by who we are vs. who we present ourselves to be vs. who others say we are. I wanted to depict this idea through the image of a question mark purposed to represent us as a individual.
  5.  Similar to the image above, I wanted to depict the struggle of finding identity through this image I’ve took in front of the University Center of The New School. It shows a number of individuals busily walking along the crosswalk, some going towards the right side of the crosswalk and some going words the left side of the crosswalk. On the right side upward side of the image, I wrote “Which Way?” depicting the hesitation of which direction to follow in order to show the struggle of choosing who you are.
  6.  Painted by Frida Kahlo, this painting consists of her grandparents, her parents, as well as herself, vividly showing her heritage. The portrait of a naked girl with the red ribbon depicting her bloodline shows the idea of her identity being constructed by her heritage. I chose this image because it relates to my theme of identity by showing how cultural heritage plays an important role in terms of who you are.
    1. https://www.fridakahlo.org/my-grandparents-my-parents-and-me.jsp
  7. This artwork titled Do the Dance constructed by Elizabeth Murray abstractly shows an image of different things such as, according to MoMA, “overturned bottle, faces, bodies, and organs, as well as references to the paintings of Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso.” I chose this construction of different colors and shapes in this particular image because I believe it shows how we are consisted of different sides and identities.
    1. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/98564

 

 

The purpose of this assignment was to explore the idea of identity in our everyday life. I learned that our surroundings have a lot of elements that can represent our identity. If we take more careful attention to our surroundings, we can find various cultural representations, gender representations, ethnicity representations, etc. that we take in to identify us. Through careful observation and critique of Ilse’s photograph of a man’s back, I also realized that we tend to easily judge and try to make sense of who someone is with just the little information that is given to us. Learning and fully knowing about our identity is important because in a world of lost identity, there would be nothing but chaos.

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