My Home in Dominican Republic
My
final project is based on my house in the Dominican Republic. My project reminds me of being united with a majority of my family members, but can also give me a
feeling of separation because of the fact that we will not be seeing them for a few
years. I came to the Dominican Republic very often with my parents to visit old
friends and family. I chose this idea for the project because this house is a
part of my childhood. My brothers, cousins, and I have played many games,
including video games, together. We would play hide and seek, baseball (mostly
practice hitting a ball with a baseball bat), basketball, and tag. With many
family members, activities are very fun. I would categorize my work as a
sculptor and worked on this project with my parents. I used cardboard to build
the walls and cement type of glue(very strong glue) to prevent the house from falling. This symbolizes the
renovation of our house. The building of the house and the change of
house color are all components of renovating a house. The walls were colored
with color pencils and markers. I compared my work with Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul
and Tom Nussbaum’s Family Totem. The Family Totem shows us that each member of
the family supports one another, and they have each other’s back. The images
above prove this point by working together as team. I compared my work to Frida
Kahlo’s Casa Azul based on the fact that her art piece reminds her of her home
and has now become a museum today. The museum even has many of her possessions
and artwork to remember Frida. This project will cause the audience to think
about their past. The audience will notice that this project is about identity
and based on past memories. Overall, the project is trying to show the audience
that our past memories remind us about identity. There are people who have had good
experiences in their childhood in other countries. My midterm project is
completely different from my final because it was based on me as a gamer, as a
character of a game and presents issues that games have today. For example,
many games today have microtransactions or DLCs that prevent you from exploring
a new world or getting stronger. Although, they are similar based on my
identity. The midterm represents me as a gamer, reminds me of my childhood and
of times when games did not require microtransactions. My final also reminds me
of my childhood when my family and I have visited the Dominican Republic and
have done many fun activities with a majority of our family members. I wanted
to make my project different because I believe the house in the Dominican
Republic is a part of who I am, and I wanted to share my experiences with
others.
Media is a good venue for
self-presentation since you can easily communicate your own image to others. Media
platforms have a growing importance in our lives since they are the places
where we “showcase” our living experiences. They also reflect a variety of
dimensions regarding our position in the virtual and physical social life. The
spectacle means the mass media, where the glaring begins and causes the
spectacle. According to Debord, "the spectacle can be found on every
screen that you look at." It is the advertisements plastered on the subway
and the pop-up ads that appear in your browser. The spectacle reduces reality
to an endless supply of commodifiable fragments, while encouraging us to focus
on appearances. My
project exists in the spectacle because many people have grown up and visited
their countries during childhood. This means that people can share the same
experience. When others can relate to your work, the spectacle begins.
Quotes
We never look at just
one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves
(Berger, 9).
Each image looks
directly out to the reader. The background is plain and undistracting, there is
no trick lighting. (Finkelstein, 122).
“Like all languages advertising is polysemic, it can
express multiple levels and registers of meaning (Finkelstein, 151).”
References
Berger, J. (n.d.). Ways of Seeing. United
Kingdom: British Broadcasting Corporation & Penguin.
Finkelstein, J. (2007). The Art of Self Invention
Image and Identity in Popular Visual Culture. New York; London, United
States of America: I.B.Taurus & Co Ltd.
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