Self Introduction Post: Rafael Maglantay

This is me.

Hello, I'm Rafael Maglantay. I'm a freelancer illustrator and a barista. I'm personally very picky with who commissions me, and I try not to take any work that doesn't suit me. Before NJCU, I started my art career in high school by actively painting, learning classical methods and putting up galleries. In my first year for college, I began as a freshman at Pratt Institute, majoring in Drawing. Once I began to get exposed more to digital artwork, I decided to make a switch to BFA Illustration, a field I thought that suited me far more. I transferred to NJCU in my sophomore year after Covid-19 and some financial concerns. As of right now, I'm a BA Graphic Arts senior student, and this is my final semester. I'm pretty happy to be finally on my way out, personally. I never thought of myself much as an activist, but the more I think about my stances in politics, perhaps I'm more of a punk than I thought I was.

My most recent sketch, based off of a frog and a lemur.

Don't be afraid to ask me for my sketchbook. I bring this with me everywhere, from class, to public spaces, to nude model sessions.

I'm a big fan of strong colors. This is a sketch after someone asked me to draw dinosaurs.

Understanding Patriarchy by bell hooks

• "Psychological patriarchy is the dynamic between those qualities deemed 'masculine' and 'feminine' in which half of our human traits are exalted while the other half is devalued... a 'dance of contempt' a perverse form of connection that replaces true intimacy with complex, convert layers of dominance and submission, collusion and manipulation.
• "As long as men are brainwashed to equate violent domination and abuse of women with privilege, they will have no understanding of the damage done to themselves or to others, and no motivation to change."

This book made me realize a lot of my own ignorance about the imbalanced power between a man and a woman. The scaling between a man's position of power versus that of a woman's, the way women are depicted in media recently versus that of history. It led a lot for me to wonder, to understand, to connect to the people I love and know around me, to the figures I've come to idolize in time. The second quote resonated the most, and it begins to put into perspective for me why feminists take such proactive actions as to battle against the patriarchy. To be frank, initially my first exposure to feminism came in the form of a belligerent woman calling all video games a way to exercise the male fantasy. At that time I thought it ridiculous, but now that I'm more learned, I see where she was coming from, even if it was partially wrong to generalize every game under that perspective.

What Memes Owe to Art History | Artsy

• "Wershler argues that memes should be understood as the digital descendants of artists such as Man Ray, Walker Evans, and Andy Warhol—all vanguards whose practices largely concerned informational and social disruptions."
• "It isn’t so much about visuals, but instead digs deep into the cultural architecture of memes and their political power as a networked critical resistance, where their abilities to incite and inspire, to problematize and be problematic in equal turn, offer a mirror image of our volatile present as much as their avant-garde heritage."

Memes are strong, period. That's it. That's the end of my response.

In all seriousness, the speed at which news and information spread is like wildfire. The ease of creating a meme can be done through a website, or at your own whim via your phone, anywhere as long as you've got charge and signal. I've been told that Generation Z is called the Artist generation, and I can see it in the form of how much content is created in our little world. Art doesn't have to be anything complicated, it doesn't have to be drawn images, we've established that much. When people make memes, enforcing a message, relaying a joke, or coming up with some godforsaken line that would threaten the sanity of your average medieval peasant,

that's art.

Memes Are Our Generation's Protest Art | VICE

• "Memes can spread far more quickly than the songs or art projects of previous generations, and there’s such a low barrier to entry that anyone can make them; they can go viral in a matter of minutes."
• "Every time I see a new iteration of the lawn-mowing boy meme pop up on my feed with thousands of retweets, it’s a refreshing reminder that others agree with me that Trump is absurd. The pure-hearted 11-year-old who Trump appears to be yelling at stands in for everyone who is living through his lies and verbal attacks. Explaining that in words took a long time, but one glance at this meme and you get it.

Honestly, and call me weird for it, my main source of news is no longer the TV channel, or breaking news off of Youtube. A lot of how I learn about current events is from my circles of friends, communities I'm a part of, and the memes they produce and share. With it's own fair share of humor and playfulness, the people around me have kept me from being able to live under a rock by constantly shoving this content in my face, building upon my impression of the world around me. And honestly, it does put a biased lens on first glance, but it makes me curious. It becomes the topic of conversation, and it leads me to do my research. It becomes a pipeline where, recent news affect my peers, leading to it being in my vicinity, and as a result I become more aware of what's happening.