Racial Trauma

 

Oswaldo Guayasmin

Jean Michel Basquiat

   The title of this mixed media collage is Racial Trauma. I used Styrofoam, acrylic paint, paper and a piece of drywall. I was inspired by different artists like Jean Michel Basquiat, Oswaldo Guayasamin, Wangechi Mutu and more.First, I made the layered styrofoam and formed it into a stretched out screaming face. Then I painted the drywall red and added some words and phrases. These are used either by racist Americans and  people within my community. They are said to foreigners specifically those from central and south america, including the caribbeans. Most commonly used phrases are  ‘go back to where you came from’, ‘they are all criminals’, ‘they are taking our jobs’, ‘thugs’, and the list goes on. You will see subtle racism and obvious hatred on social media, television, and any other form of communication. The piece is meant to represent the layers of generational trauma caused by racism. 

In the article Wangechi Mutu: A New Face for the Met By Nancy Princenthal, there was a part where they discussed trauma due to foreign invasion and it said  “The artist’s mother witnessed the Mau Mau rebellion in the late 1950s and “remembers as a little girl having to take a secret oath to promise never to be a traitor. There was killing, there was cruelty, and there were foreigners telling your elders what to do, ” Ms. Mutu continues. “The one thing that’s always missing — I think it’s part of the trauma — is the personal element. My parents don’t often talk about their experiences in terms of how it made them feel.” When trauma is caused the victim will try to forget or block out and I have seen many family members who have been racially discriminated against do this. My own mother has given up in speaking out against racist words said to her because she says “it will never stop.” It's as if we have no choice but to take in the malice thrown at us and do nothing. I am tired of racism being allowed in person and in the media. Just a few weeks ago I heard a news reporter talking about the Ukraine-Russian war stating “they are not like afghanistan… they (Ukraine) are civilized..” You can find many reporters saying things like “they are like us Christian, they are white..” This has to stop and people need to be called out for saying these hurtful words.

Social media is prevalent in everyone's lives now. Companies are now sponsoring creators of many ethnicities because consumers continually asked for representation. I have a problem with companies who did not cater to different enthinic groups before and all of a sudden changed their mind because they were forced or money hungry. I like to see more representation all around but even culture has become a product to either exoticize or appropriate. In the book, The Art of self Invention by Joanne Finkelstein has a passage deliberating about identity being commercialized like any other object. Finkelstein states, “Like money, and like fashion, identity itself was in danger of coming out of the commercializing smelting kiln without real substance, referent, or real value’ (Wahrman, 2004: 208).” When there is a person in an ad about a product the company is selling a set including the idea they made of said person. This said I feel like the media in general will always hold the white audience in a higher stance of importance. Due to how generic and relatable to ‘everyone’ ads and media tries to be.

There is a quote from an article called The Feminist Challenge of Wangechi Mutu by Heidi Hirschl Orley which I used to guide me in making the collage.  Ms. Mutu  says “I’m interested in powerful images that strike chords embedded deep in the reservoirs of our unconscious.” During the pandemic, the racism outside and in the media became even more obvious to the point that it could no longer be tolerated. We are told multiple times to ignore or not react to hate but it has been too many years and too much. Most of my suppressed anger towards racism was pushed onto this collage. There was this sentence in The Art of Self Invention by Joanne Finkelstein,that states “I have wondered ever since – how little does it take, how slight a movement does one make before raising the ire of someone else?” To answer that question not much, especially right now when in 2022 we still have to deal with racism daily. There is not a moment where my skin color, my language, my culture and my being is not somebody's business. However, I will continue to be proud of where my family comes from, who I am and call out racism.

Kaitlyn Arroyo - Collage Self Portrait Project

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. 

"Its all in your head" - Collage project (Dominique Ciaffone)

"its all in your head" 

INSPIRED BY:

 My project “it’s all in your head” was inspired by Wangechi Mutu. Mutu’s artwork inspired me to create a unique piece that represents something important to me. My project represents mental health, and the beauty/pain through healing. In class, we have spoken upon issues such as race, gender, identity as well as the male gaze. I wanted to focus my project on mental health because all of these issues can have a direct effect on your mental stability.

It is hard to be a person in this society who is constantly learning and growing, sometimes it feels like you are misunderstood, and there is no room for mistakes. Advertising and the media makes it so easy to compare your life to others, and see the best in everyone but yourself. Media and advertising can make you feel objectified, more like a “thing” instead of a real person. We’ve seen this theme in the work of Wangechi Mutu, where she makes collages to represent aspects of society which make her feel less then.  Whether it be because of your race, gender or simply who you are, most people have experienced discrimination in one form or another.

 Your mental health is so important to look after because if you don’t take care of yourself, it’s easy to lose sight of who you are. For my project, I used blue and white acrylic paint, real flowers, fake leaves and different journal pages with quotes on them. I used the white paint to draw clouds and the blue paint to paint the sky. I had the quote “your thoughts are like the clouds and you are the sky” in mind. This means, you are not your thoughts, and the bad feelings/ times will eventually pass. After I painted, I used journal pages from different notebooks, and wrote inspirational quotes on them. The point of my project was to give hope when dealing with mental health, and create something that represents healing and strength.  

4 quotes: 

 “The figure exists in an imaginary outer space, clutching a mangled serpent, the phallic and mythological creature that instigated the downfall of Eve.... The image and title are infested with the inherent contradictions that were the experience of a radical like Funmilayo. - The Feminist Challenge

of Wangechi Mutu

Reaction: I like how fictional figures can represent real world problems and occurrences. I wanted my art project to have this same effect, that's why I used the styrofoam head to represent a real person. 

“How we behave reflects our skills in acting, dissemblance, calcu-lation, role-playing, sycophancy and conformity, as well as our capacity to insert ourselves into the strictures of precedents and be the obliging members of the 'wedding party, to use Erving Goffman's metonym of social life.” - The Art of self invention (chapter 2)

Reaction:How we think we are perceived plays a role in our mental health. Always needing to pay attention to the way you're acting in society can take a toll on you. This is just another reason why looking after your mental health is so important. 

“Manners are about strategies of social exclusion; they define the individual's thresholds of tolerance, of what is acceptable or not”- The Art of self invention (chapter 2)

Reaction: Sometimes it feels like society is testing you, and it is hard to be yourself. Social constructs can affect people in different ways, and it can all affect our mental health. 

“Mutu is best known for spectacular and provocative collages depicting female figures—part human, animal, plant, and machine—in fantastical landscapes that are simultaneously unnerving and alluring, defying easy categorization and identification.” - Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey

Reaction: I wanted my figure to give a human-like feel, just like some of Mutu’s artwork. I wanted it to feel personal and relatable. When this is achieved, people are more inclined to listen to your visions and ideas because they are relatable. 

"Identification of Beauty" - Self-Portrait Project (Nicolette Capua)

Nicolette Capua, "Identification of Beauty", 2022

 

                                                                     Art I was inspired by:

Mickalene Thomas

Wangechi Mutu

                                                                

     My project addresses the theme of female representation in society and female beauty. Still today, women are criticized for what they wear and how they look in society and are constantly being compared to each other. Advertising, fashion, and media play a role in identity, cultural, and social norms, especially with female representation. Advertising, fashion, and media affect the way women see themselves everyday. The media is always showing women looking “their best” with a full face of makeup on, hair done, and a skinny body. Media, advertising, and fashion affect these women's self esteem and confidence everyday. These influence our views on ourselves and each other negatively. By seeing these unrealistic women everywhere on social media, magazines, and on television, it makes us, as women, feel the need to have to dress-up and cover our faces with makeup to fit society's standard they created for us. These themes are addressed in the work of some artists we have learned about and have inspired my project. These artists are Wangechi Mutu, Antoinette Ellis-Williams, and Mickalene Thomas. These women express the concern for other women's place in the world and how they are seen by others. These artists are all women and understand the struggle with having to live up to the unrealistic ideals the public has created.

    My project is a representation of the struggle women face with beauty and society's standards. In the middle of the canvas we see a woman's face. One side of the woman's face is showing a woman with a lot of makeup on, she has flowers as her hair, and she is also showing her nails done with tips on. On the other side of the woman's face there is a collage of different women with no makeup on, and she is showing her bare fingertips with no nail polish. The left side of the woman's face with makeup on is showing the idealistic “norm” women are forced to look like when they walk out of the house. The right side is showing women in their natural state, just as beautiful as the left side. These women don't feel the need to change themselves for anyone. Around the woman's head and arms are powerful words collaged together. These are words women should tell themselves everyday to stay confident and unbreakable.       

    Advertising and fashion images are influenced in my piece by showing women from all different ages, cultures, and ethnicities wearing no makeup and feeling pretty in their own skin. My project speaks to my identity and my relationship with media images because I understand this unnecessary urge to have to put makeup on before leaving the house. Media has always shown me that if I didn't cover my face with a full face of makeup and dress in tight outfits then I would be considered ugly and “not beautiful." However, every women should feel confident in their own skin with or without makeup. Women should make the decision to wear makeup or not based on their own wants and needs, not what society dictates. Makeup does not define a woman's beauty. We have to embrace our true colors and be ourselves no matter what media, advertising, fashion, and society as a whole throws our way.

4 Quotes:

Wangechi Mutu at Met ( NYT) by Nancy Princenthal

1- “The work of these women is immense. The regard for them is not.” (Times )

     Women are still being treated unfairly today and no one is doing anything about it. In this quote, Mutu is addressing that she has seen amazing work from women that have not been acknowledged enough or appreciated enough as they should be.


2- "Women express 'wealth, status, family, and tribe' through their bearing and ornamentation which are 'all languages definable as art." (Times 2)

     If women were seen to be wealthy, people would assume their husband was rich and was giving her his women. Women's status in a household was to be seen as the weak one who just cleaned up around the house as the husband was at work. Today this is not the case, as women are gaining more and more power to be independent and do what they want.

The Feminists Challenge of Wangechi Mutu by Heidi Orley

3- “These layered references and remixed body politics contribute to an interrogation of otherness, race, alienation, and female representation” (Orley 2).

     Race and female representation was Mutus' main target in many of her pieces. Addressing concerns on these topics, especially female representation, helps bring awareness to society as a whole and engages others to support her work and change the way people view women.


The Art of Self Invention by Joanne Finkelstein

4-"Bertrande was found innocent; her crime was being a woman and thereby intellectually inferior and thus susceptible to persuasion and trickery." (Finkelstein 44).

    Being a woman is not easy. We are brought into stereotypes and seen to be small and weak. Although, this is not the case. We are more powerful than everybody knows and we will not let anyone bring us down that easily.

Alanna Ciarlandini - Wangechi Mutu Inspired Selfie

This semi-collage I made is inspired by Wangechi Mutu. Wangechi Mutu's works represent femininity, culture, and beauty in nature. I am proud of my origins and my family heritage hence incorporating the Italian and Puerto Rican flag which represents my background. Mutu uses culture and a touch of feminity in her work as a form of expression for all women and more importantly for herself. 

Wangechi Mutu: A New Face for the Met

“Words that we haven’t heard, people we haven’t noticed. They will be our redemption.”

 Every human has a different thought process. Although we come across many people throughout our lives not everyone takes time to understand what each person has to say. Being more open-minded and communicative can open you to a world of wisdom. LISTEN to what those have to say perhaps their words and experiences will be your ally in a near future.

“The work of these women is immense. The regard for them is not.” 

Even though we are in 2022 we can still see the unfair treatment society gives women today. Some women still are not paid equally compared to their male colleagues and some women aren't hired for jobs that are male-dominated. In this quote Mutu makes it known that all though she has seen these beautiful works of women no one pays any regard to them or appreciates them as much as they should just because they were created by a woman. 

MoMa Excerpt from The Feminist Challenge of Wangechi Mutu

"The dualities and even multiplicities in the work are as tangled as the coiled serpent." 

Art is not perfect. Art is art because it is imperfect. Things that contrast can be found more unappealing in society but through Mutu's art the viewers see the beauty of the duality. Just because something is different and new doesn't mean we should give it a negative connotation and I feel like that's one of the aspects Mutu's art teaches us. 

Between the Earth and Sky - Wangechi Mutu

"Every single plant and animal and human is in keeping us all alive and afloat.” 

What is life without the parallels between humans, animals, and plant life? These three things are what makeup nature and all contain signs of life. Without one or the other, there will be no life because all three depend on each other to exist. Humans and animals provide plants with carbon dioxide. Our very breaths assist plants to grow and in return, we are provided with food and oxygen. Life is a beautiful gift and we keep it by being the best versions of ourselves. 

 The Art of Self-Invention: Manners 

"An individual's reputation and opportunities for advancement are affected by their delivery of a good public performance" -Joanne Finkelstein

 When it comes to meeting people we are often told first impressions are most important for they determine how we will be perceived in the long run. Unfourtantlely this is true. Often people will get one glimpse of your presentation and make judgments in such little time. Your impressions can determine whether or not you will be hired for a job. Sometimes it's not even YOUR impression that affects your life but the group of people who surround you. 

"Manners equip us with the necessities to participate in society" -Joanne Finkelstein

 Growing up we are conditioned to abide by society's rules. The idea of a person that will only be successful in life by being schooled, getting offered a scholarship into a well-renounced college, and then graduating with a high-paying job is so demanding. I feel like this idea of being successful has been tainted. You can be a successful entrepreneur and not have gone to college, in fact, there is a handful of people who prove that if you work hard enough and believe in your purpose anything is possible. You do not have to live by a handbook of rules and guides.

Trauma and Identity

 

“The artist’s mother witnessed the Mau Mau rebellion in the late 1950s and “remembers as a little girl having to take a secret oath to promise never to be a traitor. There was killing, there was cruelty, and there were foreigners telling your elders what to do, ” Ms. Mutu continues. “The one thing that’s always missing — I think it’s part of the trauma — is the personal element. My parents don’t often talk about their experiences in terms of how it made them feel.”

-Quote from Wangechi Mutu: A New Face for the Met By Nancy Princenthal

I watched videos by psychologists, professionals and those who experienced trauma that discuss how trauma affects the identity and brain. Our core beliefs like feeling safe is destroyed and in order to survive 3 personalities are created the traumatized part, the survival part and the healthy part. The healthy part regulates our feelings or at least tries to. The survival part in order to guard and protect may try to deny the trauma. The traumatized part remembers the event, remains the same age the event occurred and may be triggered (smell, visually, sounds, etc). The brain in the core perception part changes where one may see danger where others may see manageable that’s because the confidence which might have been there before said trauma occurred is no longer there so there is no trust behind ones thoughts, actions, feelings, etc. The sense of self is weakened as a defense to the state of terror that was felt like body shakes so to calm the system people may become addicts (not only drugs) or start to dampen certain responses to pleasure and connection. 

“All literary and visual forms – the novel, painting, photograph, Hollywood film, advertise- ment – have the capacity to activate the imagination. With the most rudimentary training in theories of representation we can see human movement in the multiple edges of Braque’s cubist portrait; we can see huge landscapes in the minimalist canvases of the Australian painterFred Williams. Such interpretive skills allow us to produce a sensible social environment. In this light, identity is a shifting category. It can be thought of as a residue, ‘an image pieced together’ from ongoing events, a manner of acting in situations in which we know we are being judged and classi- fied (Goffman, 1967: 31). It can be a belief, an almost universal accep- tance of a real, tangible, verifiable substance as well as an apparition, an effect of the morally charged environments in which we always expect others to judge us. Self-identity is a discourse embedded in cultural conventions. Its nature, substance, durability and origins are of less in- terest than the habits of social engagement that sustain it. We enter every moment with assumptions that seem natural and self-evident. We adroitly assume a role, pick up a script, find a place in the continuous babble of the moment.”

-Quote from The Art of Self Invention Joanne Finkelstein, Chapter 2 Manners

I remember as a kid always looking at facial expressions as cues to how to respond or not. I was very careful as to what I said to the point where I rarely spoke. Lack of confidence due to the environment I grew up may have cause me to always question everything I do, think and say. There may be circumstances where we pick up roles as said in the book but there are also times where a person would rather be invisible.

Readings:

“I have wondered ever since – how little does it take, how slight a movement does one make before raising the ire of someone else?”

-Quote from The Art of Self Invention Joanne Finkelstein, Chapter 2 Manners

I think as soon as someone is in our space and shows their mannerism we are somewhat apprehensive, alert and skeptical. This may be even more so for those who live in the city where you always have to be aware of your surroundings and looking behind your back. 

“Like money, and like fashion, identity itself was in dan- ger of coming out of the commercializing smelting kiln without real substance, referent, or real value’ (Wahrman, 2004: 208).”

-Quote from The Art of Self Invention Joanne Finkelstein, Chapter 2 Manners

In the commercial, consumer, capitalist world we live in the products are sold with the idea that these objects will give us an identity (class, appeal, personality, etc). You especially see this with the uprising of ‘influencers’ on social media either advertising or flaunting expensive or admired objects. 

“Her caryatids clearly radiate power of their own. Titled “The NewOnes, will free Us,” they represent, for Ms. Mutu, “words that we haven’t heard, people we haven’t noticed. They will be our redemption.”

-Quote from Wangechi Mutu: A New Face for the Met By Nancy Princenthal

Our identity and mannerism may change to make ourselves noticeable, to be heard in a way we weren’t before. 

“She describes her father, a businessman, as a self-made academic and sometime poet; her mother is a nurse and a midwife. Ms. Mutu (like many of her urban peers) learned about her cultural background by visiting her grandparents upcountry. Her parents speak the language of the largest ethnic group in Kenya, the Bantu Kikuyu language, and they worked to preserve that heritage by conducting interviews with elders in the countryside. “These are oral cultures — there isn’t a literary record,” Ms. Mutu points out. “They say that when an old person dies, a library goes with them.”

-Quote from Wangechi Mutu: A New Face for the Met By Nancy Princenthal

This remind me of the dialect called Kichwa that many speak in Ecuador. It was more of a spoken dialect but as of recent has a written form so that new generations can learn. Knowing this makes me glad that there is still a chance to reconnect with my indigenous identity and learn their mannerisms.

“I’m interested in powerful images that strike chords embedded deep in the reservoirs of our unconscious.”
-Quote from Wangechi Mutu The Feminist Challenge of Wangechi Mutu by Heidi Hirschl Orley
Ms. Mutu’s artworks are striking and intense. The figures and the lines contour, turn, bend and twist. Even though her work consists of many images placed together they go well with each other.

Mutu is best known for spectacular and provocative collages depicting female figures—part human, animal, plant, and machine—in fantastical landscapes that are simultaneously unnerving and alluring, defying easy categorization and identification. Bringing her interconnected ecosystems to life for this exhibition through sculptural installations and videos, Mutu encourages audiences to consider these mythical worlds as places for cultural, psychological, and socio-political exploration and transformation.

-Quote from Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey by Elizabeth A. Sackler

Her work reminds me of dreams that are basically a collection of memories that skew maybe even merge with each other. However all of it in a strange way makes sense and you can connect to the visual warping representation. 

Kaitlyn Arroyo - Wangechi Mutu Inspired Selfie

Kaitlyn Arroyo

Self Image: I

Professor Cacoilo

March 12th, 2022

  Kaitlyn Arroyo, Serene Forest, 2022

Nature is a strikenly beautiful thing. It is unpredictable, as the change of seasons prove it so. In the image provided, my sister and I enjoying the last bit of warm weather before the temperature dropped this past weekend. With change, comes growth. And I believe that enjoying and looking around nature can build character in ourselves. Nature isn't selectively perfect. Mutu's relationship with nature is very strong and her work narrows between nature and human beings. Her collages have organic materials selected from blankets, animal pelts, plastic pears, and leather. She samples African tradition and depicts these female figures as part human, animal, plant, etc. Mutu's art enables the viewer to go deeper into the meaning between her connection with nature, and the essence of all things. Some examples of her artwork that incorporate nature include: The Sticks (2016), and Mirror (2016). 

    Contemporary Artist Wangechi Mutu is born in Kenya, Nairobi. She explores the creation of collages that come alive and is known for her sculpture, painting, and performance work. Her artwork centralizes around the theme of gender, race, colonialization, and the representation of black women in society. In the process of creating art, it's supposed to tell a story about the way it is perceived. The Earth is used as her medium which is considered a living matter that gives us life. She is a nature lover who admires the plants and little organisms around us and creates work that sits upon this theme. She turns this planetary persona into a woman that is moving home. Loss of control and the end of time is the these she uses in her artwork. Her sculptures express the theme of humanity. She's produced commissioned work that has been featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art located in New York and was there for viewing till Jan 2020. It's called The NewOnes will Free us.

Joanne Finkelstein

Excerpt from: The Art of Self Invention

Two Quotes

"Good manners must be invisible, they are the 'very art that appeereth 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. Politiness 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 is the coherance 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 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 what is online and try to be cool about it. They might also do this to betray their parents tolerance on 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. 

Wangechi Mutu: A New Face for the Met

Excerpt from: The New York Times

Two Quotes

"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 feminite 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. 

"Women express 'wealth, status, family, and tribe' through their bearing and ornamentation which are 'all languages definable as art." (Times 2)

Back in the medievil century, women were regarded for their status of marriage of how much money they possessed. If they had none, they would be seen as poverish 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 women. 

MoMA

Excerpt from: The Feminist Challenge of Wangechi Mutu

One Quote

"I'm interested in powerful images that strike chords embedded deep in the reservoirs of our unconscious." (Orley 2)

I believe this quote is speaking on behalf of imagination within our brain apprehension. Imagination is so important in art because it helps us to create a space that enables us to be free to choose how we want to think and feel. You can imagine anything with the help of smells, taste, and imagery. I for one, like to imagine how my artwork will look before the actual finished product is produced. 

Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey

Excerpt from: Brooklyn Museum

One Quote

"Mutu encourages audiences to consider these mythical worlds as places for cultural, psychological, and socio-political exploration and transformation." (Brooklyn 1)

The quote infers that when viewing her female body transformation work, get a general understanding of what type of attributes are being enhanced. Using these mythical worlds opens up a new range of unhidden meanings behind the person's ethnic backgkound or culture they came from.