For my final Studio project I finished my illustrations for my small collection, I made my look in the final fabric, and then shot the look and edited the pictures.
For my designs, I chose to manipulate specific design elements that related to the Holocaust to envoke symbols that would get Jewish people’s and all of those who have personally been affected or whose families have been affected by the Holocaust. This is because my drive to make this project about the relationship between antisemitism and islamaphobic comes from my awareness of both issues because my family narrowly survived the Holocaust, and my relationship with my Great Grandma (Holocaust survivor) was my introduction to art, fashion, and social justice. I chose to draw on her account of fleeing Germany with all of the clothes she could fit on her back instead of in a suitcase for the sake of being discreet by having all the looks resemble several garments rolled up to reveal more layers of garments. I also included patches that incorporate the Jewish Star of David and the Muslim Crescent Moon and Star to evoke the symbol of the Jude Star that Jews were forced to wear, and in the new patches compare this symbol of fascism to modern nationalism / populism in terms of those (Donald Trump) who call for not only rejecting refugees and immigrants because they are Muslim, but also claiming that we should force all Muslims into a registry to help us keep tabs on them. I made all of the designs red because it, of course, evokes violence, and because in Jewish color symbolism red, because of its connotation with blood, symbolizes typified life.
For my photoshoot, I wanted to photograph myself (through video on a tripod guarded by a friend) in very recognizably Jewish locations. I chose a Synagogue, for obvious reasons, and Katz Deli, because I wanted to make sure that I did not just include practicing Jews in my message. This is because although my Jewishness is a very big part of who I am, my family, out of fear of further persecution, stopped practicing when they came to America, changed their last name from Rosenthal to Laurens, and through sexual selection effectively obliterated all recognizable traces of their Judaism. For my family, assimilation was key, largely because originally they fled Germany to Italy, which as we know fell to fascism as well. So although I was not Bar Mitzvah’ed, I have grown up with a Jewish identity, and have through family friends practiced enough Jewish holidays and attended enough Jewish services to claim an understanding of the religion. I have always found it very hard to reconcile my Jewish cultural heritage with growing up in a very decidedly agnostic family (my mom being culturally Jewish but essentially atheist, and my dad born Methodist, but converted to and practicing Buddhism), not to mention my ambiguous feelings towards Israel / Palestine that could potentially make a practicing Jew an outcast in their community alone. I have worked through a lot of these internal tensions in this project, and realized through it that I should not feel insecure about the validity of my Jewishness and that one’s Jewishness should not dictate how one feels about issues like Israel / Palestine. I believe that my Jewish heritage, and my closeness to my relatives who are Holocaust survivors has given me a unique opportunity to see social justice issues with a unique perspective, in that I have grown to understand very well the perspective of somebody who has been persecuted because of who they are, but on the other hand this understanding only reminds me how much privilege I have. This perspective motivates me to attempt to make artwork to promote ally ship between communities, especially religious minorities, and to use this perspective and my privilege to assert equality for religious (and other) minorities in any way that I can.
To read my corresponding essay, please refer to this post:
for more about my process making this project, refer to this post: