The Final Project was based on my obsession with identity. Coming from a multicultural household were my parents included an Indian-Omani father and a Colombian-American mother, there were numerous times of feeling uneasy and uncomfortable within my own skin as a result of not fitting into one culture. This became a recurring theme in my life and I was able to create a lot of work out of it. However, I did find that the pain that inspired my work didn’t allow me to grow and move on. This project was an opportunity to do just that.
Although the theme of a lot of my personal work, identity is something I was still interested in exploring as I felt it had a lot more to offer. To be specific, it has the opportunity to allow me to heal. Through the act of making a T-shirt (to create a physical artifact of my four cultures) and a website (to explore my specific associations to each of the cultures), I was able to create a synthesis of my experiences and celebrate them. I was able to put aside the uneasiness and feeling of “lacking” with the production of media to be proud of those aspects of myself.
T-shirt:
This portion of the final project was created in order to develop an artifact of my cultural identity. The reason for this was because I always felt that being an Indian-Omani-Colombian-American individual there was never anything already in existence that could symbolize all of them. So why a t-shirt? I chose to create a t-shirt due to two main reasons. The first being that I wanted to experiment with fashion as its something I have an interest in, and the second being that I wanted to create something personal to me and one way I could do that is through the creation of a second skin. This second skin is as close to my body as physically possible without tattooing it. I wanted to bond with it.
On the t-shirt, there is a graphic I created that is a literal synthesis of my cultural identity. It included a QR code (which linked to the home page of my website) and 4 small symbols that represented the four cultures (circle for Oman, rectangle for India, semicircle for Colombia, and a square with a divot for the USA).
Website:
The second aspect of the project, and the most labor-intensive, was to create a website. The concept of a website came out of a peer of mine who suggested that I explore my associations with culture on a more intimate basis. Originally, I wanted to link songs, each of whom related to a specific culture, from youtube to QR codes that I would then place on the T-shirt, however, it soon came apparent that this was too simplistic and there could be more research and unpack. This resulted in the idea of creating my own website that housed videos. These videos were my takes on visually representing the songs. Why are these songs included? I chose to incorporate these songs as I have always had a connection to music and I believed that it would be a great way of capturing the essence of each culture. The addition of visuals supported the songs and allowed me to give my interpretation of them as well. The last element I included was the piece of writing underneath each video. The reason for this was to add another layer of me and my connection to the song with each of the cultures. It hence grounds the music to my experiences in life and “personalizes” it. However, I left much of it vague and up to the reader to decipher. This way I could allow the audience to create either associate it with their own previous life experiences or develop new ones.
I invite you to look at the videos and written prose through the link below.
Link to Website:
https://ibnwaqar.wixsite.com/obsession
Reflection:
In all, I found this entire experiences wonderful. Although difficult to keep up with the workload, I found that it was worth the effort. Do I feel like I’ve solved the issue of my identity and how to synthesize it? No. I don’t because I feel like I’ve only just scraped the surface of the topic. This idea of healing through making and also this codification of my cultural identity are two methods and approaches that I never considered earlier on. It’s interesting and definitely something I will look into more. In addition, the act of having the audience put headphones on and experience the work is something else that highly fascinates me. In essence, it was a performance of me sharing my identity with the world. I haven’t been able to think much on it as it’s something I realized towards the end of the project, but I plan on doing so later as well.
In terms of my seminar work, I am really proud that I was able to delve into the topic of immigration and that aspect of my identity. I have always wanted to do more in-depth research into that part of my ancestry and it allowed me to contextualize my family in the ebb and flow of history. In a way, I was able to look at my situation in the world as an opportunity to heal and celebrate. Through the writing and research into my family, I was able to understand them better and appreciate them as well. Overall, it was a deeply insightful experience.
Link to Presentation:
