If used correctly, art can become a political tool used to stimulate thought provoking ideas and create meaningful dialogue about societal issues. Therefore, I focus on creating conceptually based, socio-political art, which tends to address the issues of classim, racism, and sexism. Currently, I am creating work that revolves around the concept of identity and the crucial role it plays in People of Color’s lives. For example, I am exploring the issue of colorism, where Black/Latino/Asian people place value on lighter skin tones, and how it operates within the intersection of race and gender in those communities. I am mostly working in the medium of collage, using magazine advertisements that depict celebrities because we are a celebrity culture and using familiar images can help connect the audience to the artist’s work. Essentially, I wish to use my artistic voice as means to challenge people to think about themselves as an individual in a collective society and question the role they might play in maintaining a white heterosexist patriarchy.
This is where I stand with art. All of that other abstract art, while it may be very well done, is nonsensical and is created in order to masturbate one’s ego. On another note, I am entering an art festival with Chicago’s Around the Coyote art gallery and I am using this as my artist statement. I will upload my jpeg images later.
