Reflections and Self Image: Reclaiming Vanity & Healing Our Inner Child
When first mapping out what I wanted each piece to look like in my head, I knew the essential parts in the video were going to be a mirror, and my nieces. I had this original idea of having the raw audio in the background and just giving this authentic vibe of random things that kids do and how kids see themselves in a mirror. I wanted it to be almost cinematic but also very bloopers like. I stressed to them that I wanted them to have fun being themselves, and not to take anything too serious. The main inspiration came from the performance piece done by Marina Abramovic. In her performance piece she sat across from random strangers where they make eye contact and this deep connection is formed and it is so minimalistic yet so powerful to understand how human eye contact and connection is. “I think they lose all perception of time when they get up there,” Quoting a spokesman in the New York Times Article. Where they are describing what it felt like for the volunteer who sits across from Marina. I think my main intention was to focus on what it meant to make eye contact but stir it away from the direction of its effects on time and connection with others. I wanted to understand what the connections I could make with the self and what better way to do that than to look at our self in the eyes in something that is the literal representation of my favorite theme of vanity.
A mirror is so effective in literally looking at ourselves. Then I thought about where and when my relationship with myself became so stirred and thought about times where my self image and perception didn’t really affect the way I do things. I remembered how I was so carefree and less concerned about what I looked like. I could barely comprehend that I am being perceived by anyone outside of my mother. I decided to take themes from my past projects where I take the vanity to a higher level, and I am bringing it back into to before it destroyed and abused me, like in the photo series assignment, and I show what my reflection was like as a child, and thinking about the two time periods where my mindset had started shifting. When thinking about what it means to be perceived and how vanity takes a big part in a woman’s style I thought about the object, the mirror, that held so much power in this. I thought about the quote from Widewalls where we are unpacking the abilities Yoko Ono had in her work where not only did she require participation in her performance art, like how I do in this piece, but we also talked about how we are minimizing the power in these material items. “Her style often included “dematerialization of the art object,” which is a phrase that would only come to use when the art critic Lucy Lippard employed it to talk about the practice of turning away from objects and towards ideas.” This shifted my goals into thinking about reclaiming and taking away the power that the object thinks it has, and use it for a purpose outside of its traditional use.
In the actual performance itself little moments are actually including myself, this is a representation of how my adult self has so many issues with the actual mirror itself and will often avoid it and focus on everything else. It's the distant yet unavoidable relationship I have with vanity. It mainly is just a video of my nieces who are just being themselves in the mirror. At first they are also kind of uncomfortable with staring at themselves in the mirror and quickly they just start being silly kids and not really over-thinking the things they do. Weirdly enough they mimic the poses that are so common for people to do when they are in front of a camera or mirror. This shows that they already started picking up on subtle actions that we do that affect how we represent ourselves on social media. The majority of it is just them being themselves and there was one unscripted scene in the film where while I was doing my nieces hair where you catch an authentic moment where my youngest niece, Mikenzie, and I are unpacking what our relationship with our curly hair is like, and our responses are so different because of so many different reasons. At the end of the video I started thinking about what it means to be an artist and what art is too many nieces, and they did a lot of talking about how art has only really been something that is physical, like drawing. This is when I took the time off camera to talk to them about all different areas that the novice self knows about. This is where I thought about the quote “Shifting attention from the art object to the artist’s action further suggested that art existed in real space and real time.” I wanted them to participate in art the way they were traditionally known for but also have them be a part of my own performance piece, so I gave them some red paint and mixed it with dish paint and let them draw what they wanted in the mirror, taking turns. And that led to some of the parts where they were really enjoying the time they were having to themselves. Even in the editing process of the video the older niece, Mikeyla, wanted to take part in the editing process, i.e the song being played as filler music, that kind of has a catchy tune, that is somber but also kind of playful, song Titles Not Angry by Chris James. It took some time for her to convince me into including it.
BONUS- Instructional Pieces
Who are we without color?
Imagine every time you have ever looked at yourself.
Now take away any hues of color from every memory.
Can you recognize yourself?
How do you think you're perceived now that you have no tone in you?
Count Backwards
Count backwards, can you?
What if instead of getting older we were getting younger.
You lose your wisdom and become a butterfly.
You lose all your past ideas of what it meant to be a being.
Do you reckon you are almost free?
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