This week the topic we tackled was something of an open ended idea. We were looking at Miru Kim’s work and watched her TedTalk online. Her work is inspiring and I respect the audacity that she has by going into abandoned/ illegal/ underground spaces by herself or accompanied by her sister. I don’t know if I would be able to face the fear of creating self-portraits in spaces I do not feel comfortable in. Maybe that is a flaw and something I should work in. Who knows what other things I could find out about myself if I followed her approach.

As part of the assignment we had to read the article about her and answer questions about what environments I feel most comfortable in, where I am vulnerable and/or exposed, and whether I have ever photographed in abandoned areas. This was my response:

I have to admit that I feel very comfortable shooting in areas which I experience on a daily basis...

So this week our topic was on self portrayal. We were given a reading called “On self-portrayal” by R. Duncan Wallace. It was very interesting and certainly important for me to start figuring out certain aspects of why I create self-portraits and why they have become so important to me. As part of the assignment we had to write our thoughts as to whether the art of creating self-portraits have affected our own awareness. My response was the following:

I believe that it has. I think that the more self-portraits I create the more pieces I begin to understand about myself. Be it new forms of expression, or lacking parts of my identity I have yet to come across. The reading “Self-Portrayal” by R. Duncan Wallace was very interesting and certainly correlates to many of the ideas I believe to be behind the art of creating a self-portrait. One of which believe to be true is that a self-portrait...

This week our topic of exploration was “Role-Playing”. Connie gave us a reading but asked us to think about which artists come to mind when you think about role-playing before going through the article. This is what I came up with:

“There are many artists that could be considered to have work that reflects some kind of role-playing. In most cases, I believe this role-playing to be subtle, but there are two prominent names that pop into my head where role-playing is very obvious but very different in both artists. Cindy Sherman and Brooke Shaden.

Cindy Sherman:
Throughout her entire career she has been addressing various views regarding the female body and female identity. She has created work that is in base a critic to society, but uses herself as the subject, hence playing various roles of women. It is never really her, but it could certainly be so, it is just the way she prefers to...

I am in my last semester at AAU, and things could not be more crazy. I have been struggling with a lot lately, from my personal to my professional life, and honestly this class could not have come at a better time. I am hoping that I can work on my thesis as well as producing more abstract work about my self and my identity not only in this world but as an artist.

The environment of the class felt great, and having Connie as my teacher again is a pure blessing for my last semester. She really gives me the freedom to do work that matters to me, and ends up giving me more confidence as an artist. Anyway, enough about this, let me tell you what I have been up to this first week.

First of all we had two readings that were very interesting. One was called “What’s the difference between a Selfie and a Self-Portrait?” by Alli Burness and the other was “Selfie vs. self-portrait” by Gordon...