Kaitlyn Arroyo
Self Image: I
Professor Cacoilo
March 20th, 2022
Kaitlyn Arroyo, Unifying Women for the Cause of Peace, 2022
Poster Board/Collage
My Unifying Women for the Cause of Peace project centralizes the idea that women are role models in our lives. They are here to restore humanity and bring comfort to our families. The materials used to help create this project are: poster board, magazine pages, scissors, clear glue, felt petal roses, heart stickers, and pink border embellishments. The poster emulates that women are a source of unity for people and represent happiness and elegance. Women are the main source of happiness for a stable family. However, women should be subjected to the societal roles of having equal rights to be able to do whatever they want instead of just having the responsibilities of a housewife.
Women help unite people together. The color pink symbolizes caretaking, nurturing, and sweetness. The hearts symbolize them putting their love and kindness out there in the world. Roses, along with their admiration and sweet fragrance, stand as purity and sacrifice. Choosing this as an element in the project gives it a two-dimensional value and sticks out in the foreground as it pops out at the viewer. The magazine picture of the woman is in the center of everything that is important to her, including and not limited to: marriage, love, loyalty, companionship, and self-value.
The goal is for a woman to not be happy with materialistic objects but for her to put everything on a scale with the same importance in her life. By this idea of unifying women together, we can see how different, but also similar they are in sharing customs. For example, a successful woman can be depicted as having a loyal husband, several children, and a house over their head. Another example of a successful woman could be a single woman, who relies on nobody for a stable income and is able to fulfill the same needs as someone who has a significant other. The important thing is to not scale one or the other as more rectifying because they have something that another person doesn't.
Inspiration Images
I found my inspiration photos online by looking at aesthetic Etsy boards with similar color schemes and ones that focused on the female gaze. My collage was inspired by the works of Wangechi Mutu because her collages on paper represent female figures composed of animal, plant, or mechanical parts. She uses mismatched fragments and decorative patterns of fashion, pornography, travel, and magazines (which is what I incorporated into my piece.) These materials are produced onto African art for the attention of Western audiences. The female figure is often presented in a variety of ways that are depicted as purity and youth, and Ms. Mutu provides a centralized critique of the female persona and self-identity.
Four Quotes
"Women express 'wealth, status, family, and tribe' through their bearing and ornamentation which are 'all languages definable as art." (New York Times 2)
Back in the medieval century, women were regarded for their status of the marriage or how much money they possessed. If they had none, they would be seen as impoverished and weak, but if they had money, people would assume that she has a wealthy husband. Their status stuck with them like a pair of scissors and glue. Being that is who they "were" and defined it, the art that Ms. Mutu created was what symbolized their bearings of being a woman.
"Ms. Mutu notes that 'in classical African art, the female body in some instances is the museum - she is where the art is placed." (Times 1)
African feminine artistry should be documented in a museum so people can understand and study the figurative structures of a female body, record, and express their feelings when viewing this particular subject matter. Ms. Mutu is known for creating abstract art and uses the body as a primitive space to create collages that are morphed with animal, plant, and mechanical parts to give it some defining feature. Because everyone knows what the female body looks like.
"Good manners must be invisible, they are the 'very art that appeareth not to be art." (Finkelstein 78)
When people view you, it shouldn't be apparent that you're a nice or bad person. There are many people that are quick to judge an individual by their appearance alone and never conversate to get to know them for who they truly are inside. That's why, when you surprise that person, that is the true art of seeing for yourself what was invisible to the eye. Politeness goes a long way in this world.
"The well-mannered individual should not laugh too loudly, should not scratch, or sit with their legs splayed out, neither should individuals clean their teeth with a knife, nor cough when others are speaking." (Finkelstein 86)
Well-mannered individuals are the coherence of good behavior coming from a person. Good behavior can make a conversation more comfortable and people will be more pleasant to have you as a company. Having this attribute is common sense, but many believe manners are becoming a lost art. Why? Because in today's society, not many people learn to behave properly. Maybe they are influenced by what is online and try to be cool about it. They might also do this to betray their parent's tolerance of them. Our grandparents were taught that the respect you put out in the world will come back to you, and this message is lost in today's youthful era.
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