"Do I Belong?" - Final Project

 

Do I Belong? - Amy Castellon

For my final project I did a large drawing on a poster that was show cases the experiences my mother went through when living in Guatemala and eventually coming to the United States. I had talked to my mother about what life was like for her as she grew up in Guatemala and the reasoning as to why she and her family decided to come to the United States. She mentioned how growing up, there were a lot of issues regarding gang violence, poverty and corruption. However, she still distinctly remembers what it was like when coming to America with her family. When coming to the United States, she believed this country was a safe haven. A place were everyone gets an equal opportunity to be successful. But upon arrival, things didn’t seem this way to her. Coming here at the age of 15, she and her family would be yelled at in public by strangers if they were heard speaking to one another in Spanish. They were often told to speak English or as so many famously put it, “American”. Another obstacle that she had trouble overcoming was job searching. She had a hard time finding jobs as she didn’t have much experience but she also tended to get a lot of scares because she would show up in the clothing that didn’t seem so “professional” but they were all she had. Lastly, she and my father faced poverty together. What made things worse was how many people tended to take advantage of them, as they were immigrants, and gave them apartments that were very run down and were not the safest to keep children in.

            I used markers and crayons for color on my project to bring it to life. I chose to use this medium for my final project because I feel like it’s a very personal way to create art. Your using hard work to get your final product, especially when telling such a personal story. In my project you see a young woman standing in the middle of the poster, with a line above her dividing both sides of the poster. On the left side we see the life she lived when in Guatemala that caused her family to make the decision to come to the United States. We see violence, poverty, and little picture of her and her family crossing a river when arriving to the U.S. On her right side, we see the troubling experiences she had when living in the United States such as racism, job searching and poverty/housing troubles. With these divisions showing both sides of hardships that she went through it made her question her decision on leaving Guatemala, but at the same time she worried of what life would be like for her if she were to go back. She questioned herself a lot asking, “Was all of this worth it?”

            To me this is a self-portrait because my mother has had a significant impact on my life. We’ve gone through so much together as a family that her story is something so important to me and helps remind me as to why I should work hard and strive to give her a good life that she deserves. An artist that inspired my final project was Ana Mendieta. In an article titled “Overlooked No More: Ana Mendieta, a Cuban Artist Who Pushed Boundaries”, I enjoyed reading about her work and how personal it was to her. She used her experiences in her life as well as many topics that she learned about that influenced her decision making for art. One quote that connects to my final project from this article is, “As an immigrant, Mendieta felt a disconnect in the United States” (Paragraph 6). I feel like this quote perfectly captures what my project is about: the disconnect many immigrants, like my mom, feel while in the United States but as well as from their home country after being away for so long. Another quote is, “The trauma of being uprooted from her Cuban homeland as a girl would leave her with questions about her identity and make her more conscious of being a woman of color” (Paragraph 6). Mendieta’s experience is similar to the way many immigrants feel after being in a different country for so long. A lot of the time, people end up having issues with identity as they feel they don’t really belong anywhere. In this case, the United States wont accept her because of her skin tone, the language she speaks, and the overall cultural difference. However, some countries have trouble accepting other people in their countries because they feel one may be too “Americanized”. A final quote is “Mendieta “used fear well, transmuting a profound sense of psychological and cultural displacement into an experience of merging with the natural world and its history through art” (Paragraph 8). This is another quote that I feel captures my project very well. It shows the cultural displacement that many people who come to the U.S. feel upon arriving. In my project I used the “history”, being the past in the home country, and the “natural world” as the world they stepped in within the United States.

            My final project is something very personal and is a big issue that many people who leave their home countries face. It’s a dark reality that many people have faced or are currently facing in order to give themselves an easier life for themselves and their families. Though I haven’t immigrated to a different country, the experiences of the right side of the poster are certainly ones I have gone through due to the color of my skin. It’s an unfortunate reality to this world we live in but we are slowly and surely showing many people who look like me are making their mark in this country and showing that we have the utmost potential just like everyone else.