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.