For the taxonomy assignment, I chose 36 images of signifiers and 36 images of contexts or other works and made them two taxonomies. All of the images are related to my topic, hyphenated identity, and they were all found through Google search or on Art21.
For the images, I tried to include the struggles of being an hyphenated American identity. For instance, there are 3 images on the signifiers taxonomy that show 2 faces side by side, showing two different types of make up impacted by two different cultures, Western and Asian. Through these images, I wanted to depict a challenge that I often had to deal with as a teenage girl in a clash of American culture and Korean culture.
Signifiers taxonomy:
Other artist works taxonomy:
Reflection
- What I learned about my topic through this image collection exercise was the different artists and their works that were influenced by a similar topic of mine. I was especially intrigued by the works of Chan-Hyo Bae and how he used costumes, makeups, and props to show the idea of combining two different cultures.
- The most challenging thing about this research was the number of images that I had to collect.
- I’ve learned from this assignment that whenever I am doing a research in the future, I will need to look into other artists and their works that touched on a similar idea that I am studying on.
Class Elevator Pitch
During the class elevator pitch exercise, I interviewed Jin who also has identity as her theme. Through her taxonomy explanation, I’ve learned how useful and powerful a mask can be when concealing an identity and constructing a new one. She also exemplified different artists who wears mask for various purposes, and I was intrigued by how through their masks, they are allowed to have both an artist life and an ordinary life. I was able to connect my topic of hyphenated American identity with her concept of masks. The term “…-American” allows immigrants to adapt to their new environment while maintaining their origin identity, similar to how artists are allowed two different identities. Through her thorough explanation, I was able to not only learn about her ideas, but I was also allowed enough time to construct my own perspective and connections for her theme, rather than jumping to the conclusion.
Being actively listened by my partner, I was able to explicitly describe about not only the final outcome of the taxonomy, but also the whole process. As I was explaining to her, I was also allowed to organize and clear up my idea. My partner was also given enough time to fully observe things she might have missed at first sight. Through the questions asked by Jin, I gained an insight of how others might perceive my idea and learned what to focus more on to improve and further my research.
