Self Portrait Performance

 

            For my Self-Portrait performance I’ve done a performance in which all that can be seen are silhouettes. In my video you see a silhouette looking toward the camera and seemingly wants to get out of where they are. As they do so things start falling around them such as papers and beauty products. A hand even appears and seemingly scolds the silhouette. This video is meant to represent the ones own conscious when it comes to mental health. The papers are meant to symbolize work/school. The beauty products are meant to symbolize pressures of beauty standards. Lastly, the hand is meant to symbolize words of hate directed towards someone. All of these things can stack up inside a person and cause ones mental health to get worse.

            With this video, I’m raising awareness for mental health by showing what can truly be going on inside someone’s head. In the United States, mental health isn’t taken as seriously as it should be. It isn’t until it’s too late that people realize its importance, only for the discussions about it to slowly die down with time and eventually stops becoming a conversation. Mental health is an issue that shouldn’t have a conversation once in a while, it should be talked about and taken seriously all the time. Especially in places where a lot of stress accumulates such as school, or in the workplace. An artist that inspired this project was Marina Abramovich. Her work is used in a very personal way, especially the display at the MoMA. She looked people in the eyes and some people got emotional while others were completely calm and were having a good time. It’s a personal moment between her and the one sitting across from her with no conversation happening. So I wanted my work to feel like it was something that someone could relate to and connect personally with.  

“Although the term encompasses a broad range of artistic practices that involve bodily experience and live action, its radical connotations derive from this challenge to conventional social mores and artistic values of the past.” This is a quote from one of our readings called When Art Intersects with Life. It talks about performance art and how it has grown from the past. Performance art is an amazing way for people to create projects about self-identity. Another quote from the reading says, “It often forces us to think about issues in a way that can be disturbing and uncomfortable, but it can also make us laugh by calling attention to the absurdities in life and the idiosyncrasies of human behavior.” This is something that I love about performance art. People take so many different approaches when it comes to their performances that it can make people feel all sorts of emotions. It can make you feel empowered. It can make you feel sad. It can even make you feel happy. “Similar to performance art of the past, such approaches engage the viewer and encourage their active participation in artistic production; however, they also speak to a cultural shift toward interactive modes of communication and social exchange that characterize the 21^st century.” Performance art has the ability to make its viewers want to help out with whatever issue the performance could be raising awareness for. Just one performance art can create a spark within someone to make their own performances and continue on a chain of sparking change.