Culminating Assignment: The Final Project

For my final task, I chose to take inspiration for an artist I had been introduced to earlier in the semester: Barbara Kruger. Her work is essentially taking all of the things that I love and aspire to in my own art, and making it even better. Her work is simple, mixed media, and most importantly, its political. And god knows I love to get political. (Typing those words put that Olivia Newton John song in my head. You know, the "let's get physical, physcial, I wanna get physical" one.) 

Anyway, back to the point; Kruger is essentially an infinitely talented, more famous version of myself, and so, of course, I wanted to take inspiration from her work and put my own spin on it. But before we go any further, I just wanna say that while I took inspiration from Kruger's work, these were no way intended to copy what she was doing. I deliberately made my work look different because I recognise the line between inspiration and copying.

For the project itself, I decided that I wanted to focus on more social justice type issues, instead of tackling the consumerism and capitalism Kruger normally does. I wanted to specifically focus on things like feminism, the #blacklivesmatter movement, as well as the persecution of people of colour and those within the LGBTQ+ community. So instead of focusing on household items or commercial products, I decided to focus on the people themselves and who they represented. This was the main reasoning behind me choosing to use portraits.

Like Kruger, I also used overlayed text, however, we both used it in very different ways. When looking at her work, her words are often philosophical and have a great deal of hidden meaning behind a short sentence. Meanwhile, I aimed for mine to feel more confrontational, more demanding, I wanted them to challenge the viewer, as though the people in these pictures were questioning them specifically, demanding them to know why they are treated differently than the rest of the world, why this happened to them, why no one cares. I wanted to make the viewer feel personally attacked, as though they were the wrongdoer because so often most of society stands by and does nothing. Also because I wanted the viewer to feel what these people feel each and every day; which is unsafe, insecure, targeted, misunderstood, at risk of violence.

Enought jibberjabber though, lets get to the pictures. The first three are my favourite of the bunch, though I do like how all of them turned out.

This one calls out rape culture, and the idea that the length of a girl's skirt
should dictate whether or not someone is allowed to take away her personhood.
Photo credit: Travis Matthews

This one is simialr to the first in that it challeneges a common phrase often said to or about rape survivors.
However, this one is a bit different because it is through the eyes of a child victim,
an innocent, that we see this phrase and the pain it causes.

This one is especially relevent as Aboriginal Day just past and more and more often
First Nations culture is being stolen by trendy white women that want to
 seem "exotic" when they go to Coachella.
Photo Credit: Nicholas Kantor/Teen Vougue

I also did several more, these ones discussing themes like police brutality against people of colour, the LGBTQ+ community, and Islamophobia.

This picture specfically covers the transgender sector of the LGBTQ+ community,
and the complexity of gender. It asks the viewer how they define gender,
as well as whether gender needs to be defined at all.
Photo Credit: ANNIE VAN GEMERT

This was the picture that sparked this whole project, other than Kruger of course,
his name was Philando Castille and hes was shot while unarmed by a police officer
while he was in a car with his girlfriend and his daughter. Catsille's story is only one of countless many.
Photo Credit: Philando Castille

This picture discusses the fact that many in the West will attempt to claim they care about Muslim women and their supposed oppression, but will not lift a finger to help these same women when they are become refugees fleeing a dictatorship or war. Its meant to show the hypocrisy of these people.
Photo Credit: iStock

Overall, I'm very happy with how my project turned out. My only regrets and tings I would have done differently would be that, if I had had the time, experiemnt a bit more with the text, change it up a bit more and explore my different options. I would have also loved to try and use my own photography and created my own portraits insetad of having to use one's that I found on the internet. However, once again I liked the overall turnout and am very proud of them.