My name is Megan Uribe, I am focusing on majoring in either Integrated Design or Communication Design with a minor in Film Production. Almost all of my work is focused on digital and 2D pieces, along with short films. My interests are heavily in photography and film production, along with writing that connects to both. I tend to focus on topics such as feminism, inequality, love/intimacy, and general narrative storytelling.
In my research project, I decided to dive into the topics of feminism and sisterhoods in order to understand the main character of the Hunger Games, Katniss, better. I focus on how Katniss interacts with the women around her and how she carries herself in general as a competitor. Katniss is a strong and complex character and I try to piece together different aspects of who she is, in order to understand her depth.
In the projects preceding this, I have worked on different aspects of feminism and what it means to be a women in this day and age. I created creatures that were complex and had more than one meaning behind them, which is a direct translation into what women look like today and how they are perceived. After watching The Hunger Games, the biggest question I had was how the relationships Katniss had in her life affected the way she played in the Games. I also questioned how those relationships affected her as a person and woman in general. These questions pushed me to research the ideas of sisterhoods and how women work together. I found massive amounts of information about what it looked like for strong women to work together and it influenced me even more to move further into this topic. I believe that all of the research, making and analyzing came together in the moment that I started recognizing these relationships in my own life. As soon as I realized that it wasn’t just an idea in a movie or an idea within art, I wanted to make those connections on all fronts.
The zine I created about Katniss was a representational and abstract version of their relationship and how it informed the story of The Hunger Games. The first image is the cover of my “She’s a Woman” zine, and shows facial features deconstructed of both a white and black woman. This was a conscious decision because I wanted to make sure I incorporated as many races as I could in order to be representational as possible. I wanted any girl to pick this zine up and find pieces of herself within it. The next image is a page that has text that reads “There’s a revolution happening”, indicating the indisputable truth that women are gaining more and more strength to speak up for themselves and demand better. This also shines a light on the perspective of women dominating within The Hunger Games, and how Katniss played the system to fight against it’s prejudices. The other text reads “sisterhood=strength”, which plainly speaks for itself. Katniss takes immense pride in her relationship to her younger sister and her relationship to Rue during the Games.
