Saturday, December 12, 2009

utopia: final project





My final, utopia project is an extension of my persona project, and part of an even larger exploration that I hope to continue developing for a while. As I stated before, other people have always questioned my ethnicity. Having gone to a small, sheltered private middle and high school, I was one of four students of color in my grade. When my fellow classmates “learned” this fact, they ridiculed me until graduation. Having blonde hair, and light skin, and looking virtually 100% white, made it impossible for people to take my background seriously.
Growing up with a black father and a white mother was something I took pride in. When I grew up and realized that they way I perceived myself and the way I looked were staunchly different, I became introverted and shy about my skin color. There have been countless occurrences when people have told me what I can and cannot say in regards to my background. “You’re not really black,” has been the most common response.
No matter how progressive we might think we are, the tendency to judge people at face value, through race, gender, dress, etc.. is ever-present. For me, utopia is a place where this need to fit people into categories doesn’t exist. A place where the marriage of the way I look, and they way I perceive myself can co-exist, instead of compete.

persona






For the majority of my life, people have questioned my ethnicity. They usually guess Russian, or maybe Icelandic, but never black. When I tell them that my Mom is white and my Dad is black, the response is usually laughter. My ethnicity has been a joke.
Having gone to a small, somewhat sheltered private middle and high school, I was considered one of four students of color in my grade. This was comical to the majority of my student body. In high school the last thing I wanted was for people to think that I was the white girl who thought she was black. But now that I've gotten at least a little bit older, I have begun to care less about how people perceive me. But the insecurity and awkwardness that I feel around the way I am perceived still bothers me.
For the persona project I chose to dress as a black male and a Swedish milkmaid, magnifying the stereotypes of each role. The scene of me as a black male was shot on a basketball court, whereas the scene as the Swedish milkmaid is set in a field just north of Oberlin.
I definitely did not convey exactly what I wanted to in this project, but this subject is something that I will continue to pursue throughout many projects, and spanning many years. I like to think of this as a beginning to a larger body of work that will help me to explore the concepts of stereotypes, identity and bi-raciality.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009