Intervention Final Project:
For my final project I wanted to continue with the topic of immigration with the message of empathy. As we've thoroughly discussed in class empathy is at the root of all activisms. It should be at the core of humanity and sadly it isn't, and the has become very apparent in how people are speaking about marginalized communities. Immigration is not something that is unique to only the Latino community, but we are seen as a scapegoat for almost every problem. "The artist once said that her biggest inspiration was injustice in the world." (Stefanie Graf). So, my message with this project was a mix of empathy and immigration. The immigration part was mainly shown through symbolism; I did not want too outright talk about immigration since I knew I wanted to perform this outside of the safety of campus and did not want to encounter ignorant people. "The boundary slippage of artistic activism works equally well in repressive regimes where overt political protest is prohibited, yet artistic practices are tolerated." (Duncombe, Lambert).
In my midterm I used the imagery of the monarch butterfly that is associated with immigration, it symbolizes the beauty of the right to move and live freely. “Undocubus activists forged an association between human immigration and a natural and majestic migration, reframing the image of a population unjustly feared and routinely degraded. Who, after all, can be enraged at a butterfly?” (Duncombe, Lambert, 22). I continued this imagery in my final through the stickers and wings I made. In this project I decided to walk around New York City while wearing butterfly wings and handing out stickers to convey this message. I did not want to stick to one specific place because the whole point is that you should be able to move anywhere, not be stuck one singular place. I made 3 stickers, the pink one "Be Empathic", blue one "Be the Voice for those who Can't Use Theirs" and lastly the orange one, "Immigrants are Human". My boyfriend joined in, having a set of wings of his own and he helped me hand out stickers as well. While handing these out, a lot of people were open to taking them, but a few were just not interested, even after hearing they were free, which I found odd. My mom told me that people probably were apprehensive to take the stickers or engage with us because they thought we were giving out religious or cult propaganda which I thought was funny. Some people read the message and liked it, others complimented our wings or asked if we were bees or butterflies. Overall, it was pretty fun.
My main inspirations were the Guerilla Girls, calling out the sexism and racism that is seen in museum mainly through their attention-grabbing gorilla masks. I wanted to do the same by grabbing people's attention with my butterfly wings to further my message. Another inspiration was the Chinese couple who took their wedding photos in gas masks as a way to protest the smog in Beijing. The reason this inspired me was simply because of the fact that it was a performance, something that wasn't outright telling you, but you understood with symbolism. And lastly Undocubus, was a big inspiration because of their fight for better immigration processes.
Lastly, this project fits into my art portfolio pretty well since everything I made was art based and very much my aesthetic. Even though it's not the usual topics I talk about it was a helpful start to the kind of messaging I want in my work.
Real quick I want to thank my mom and boyfriend for helping with overall ideas and especially the wings, I really couldn't have done it without them and their encouragement!!
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