Int. Studio: Self-Portrait

 

 

It is always hard when you are given the responsibility to present someone to the world. You want to make sure that what you say does them justice, that they feel comfortable, and more specifically, that they feel identified with what you portray.

For this project, we were assigned to not only do a self-portrait, but also a portrait of our partner. In it we had several limitations, such as the need for it to be in black and white, in addition to the use of an amount of material equivalent to 8 sheets of 16×24 in.

The process was the following: First, we had to interview our partners and try to get to know in the most personal way. We were not looking for the superficial, but for their truest self, their soul. After that, we tried to incorporate in their portrait as much as we considered necessary. We were given the responsibility of portraying their souls and stories.

During my interview with Sayo – my partner – I realized that we were both similar in many ways. As artists, we both find pleasure from doing collages, painting, and the world of fashion. As people, both of us have a clear set of goals that we are willing to fight for, and we both gain joy from the peacefulness of nature.

As to what makes us different, Sayo defines her artistic style as one sketchier than mine. She likes to play with the different shapes and movements that the human body achieves through the use of collage, and finds pleasure from making extravagant compositions out of her work. In addition to this, despite the fact that she – too- considers herself a visual artist, she likes textiles more than anything, and enjoys to create the clothes that she cannot buy.Furthermore, on our trip to the MET, Sayo told me about her passion for Asian art ,as part of her family comes from Japan. I believed this was a very important aspect of herself that I had to portray in her portrait. Not only did it talk about her likes, but also about her background, and her culture.

I, on the other hand, like to define myself as a more simplistic and geometric artist. Like Sayo, painting and collaging represent two of my biggest passions, together with fashion. However, my artwork runs away from the sketchiness and always tries to go towards the geometric and compositional work. As a human being, I am someone who likes to listen, to support people,  and who is highly interested in human injustices. I believe that someone always has a story to tell, that things are never the way they seem to be and that everyone always undergoes their own nightmares. To me, it is not about the outside but the inside. For this reason, I believe in the power of fingerprints, and how we are who we really are rather than the one who we want people to see.

“Similar but different at the same time” they say. And it is true.

For these reasons, my collage has a different aesthetic from Sayo’s. As I mentioned, mine enjoys from a more simple and geometric style. I included

a circle in the composition as an additional touch to my description, as to me, circles represent eternity and with this, life. On another note, I did not include a picture of myself, but one of my ears and another one of my handprints. Furthermore,  the newspaper included in the artwork are articles from the New York Times on sexism and wars as a representation of my interest towards human injustices and my past desire to become a war journalist.

 

 

Sayo’s collage alludes – too- to details and references about her personality. If one looks closely, one can appreciate two needles in the composition as a symbol for her passion towards the textiles.Her picture portrays her in her most characteristic way: her sleep. If there is something  one must know Sayo for, it’s for her sleep. No human can beat her, no place can stop her. Sayo will always fall asleep. Moreover, and as a reference to her asian background, her devotion towards fashion and her passion for asian art,  I included  a Japanese word sewn into white fabric on the right side of the composition, which stands for “Ambition” – Sayo’s favourite word. The collage also includes the found poem I wrote for her on the Seminar class.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Definitely, if I had to present her in a proper way, I had do it correctly. For this reason I tried to incorporate as many characteristic elements from her in the collage, such as her sketchy style, textiles, needles, paint, her most characteristic visual description, my found poem, and her voice. To do so, I transformed the collage into an installation and included a voice note in the background. To me, music, just like the visuals, has a great impact over our perception, as it shapes our mood, our way of interpreting and seeing.

Thus, I sent Sayo a brief script based on some of the things we talked about during her interview. What I found interesting was the way she interpreted it and made it something of hers. She incorporated her own pace, tone, and her own way of saying goodbye. There would have been no other way of portraying such things about her without this audio. In other words,  what she said and the way she said it revealed many things about herself that I would not have been able to represent pictorially.

In the installation, Sayo’s voice note played above a  “Everything I do, I do it for you”, one of the songs that I feel most identified with. I believed that by collapsing both of them, suddenly both of our representations joined as one, creating a relationship between the works of art.

Here is the link to listen to the audio: https://vimeo.com/187121097

I wanted to finish this post by commenting on something that caught my attention during the critique. While talking about how my collage did not show my face – but only my ear and my hands – Kate said it  “seems like [I] [was] almost listening to Sayo”, and Sabrina added how it “is funny that [I] never do anything about [my]self. Even when we had to do the project about our own memories, [I] came here and did someone else’s. [They] can see that [I] [am] all about the people, and that is something that [I] reflected in your collage”.

I had not thought of that before. But somehow, it is true.

 

Here are the previous sketches to the final artwork: