Photography Blogography

Like all my projects, I approached this one with a very open mindset. My creative process is very “go with the flow,” with things changing along the way as I’m working on it. The idea for this project all started because whenever people would meet my cat, they would always comment on how large he is. Then, as I was working on the images, he started looking like a weird celestial being in these surroundings, so I started drawing halos and swirls of light around him. I’d like to think that there is a deeper meaning to these pieces, but really, I just like creating anything that makes me happy. And with my cat being someone who has brought me a lot of joy and comfort, it was very fun having him be the subject of many of my photographs throughout this class. 

Jamal Cyrus's piece Nuwaubic Connections (2020) is a translation from paperwork and posters and advertisements called "The Kings of Africa", a massive corporation catering to and depict African pride leading to Jamal redistributing that text. These Budweiser advertisements were marketed towards African Americans and the company commissioned African American artists to make the artwork for the advertisements as a nod to the history and culture. Because these products were found everywhere, from grocery stores to bodegas from the most marginalized neighborhoods and otherwise, the installation shows the transmission of cultural capitalism. Jamal quilted the posters and translated them into a new form by stitching them together with prayer talismans. He had it photographed at extremely high resolution for the installation. It references the African diaspora in relation to cultural capitalism and capitalism's relationship to the life cycle of a city (the site of the exhibit was a former Budweiser warehouse which has since transformed into something else, an unintentional coincidence but bears meaning nonetheless).

African Cosmologies, Public Life: Distance and Diaspora was an exploration of the interconnectedness of global African diaspora through works depicting shared geospecific traditions, cultures, communities, and sociopolitical issues. Public Life was a series of outdoor art exhibitions, presented on street-facing building facades in the Arts District of Houston. It was composed of large-scale vinyl photos from global and Texas artists of the African diaspora. The exhibition featured works by Jamal Cyrus, Eric Gyamfi, Zina Saro-Wiwa, and Aida Silvestri and held themes of social activism, visibility, and solidarity. 

The Public Life exhibition series examined the interwovenness of time, publicness, and community, and how these relatively mundane and taken for granted concepts have been redefined by recent events such as the coronavirus pandemic, political unrest, and civil rights movements across the world. Cyrus, Gyamfi, Saro-Wiwa, and Silvestri document snapshots and stories of tenacity in these trying times, steadfastness against oppressive ideology, and showcase the history of politicization of the personal (given the highly politicized identity of the African diaspora). The exhibition questioned the role of the public and what publicness means in 2020 and 2021. 

Video art is an art form that utilizes videography as a visual and auditory medium that emerged around the late 1960s as video technology became more readily available outside of corporate use.

A few of the highlighted video artists were Wolf Vostell, Andy Warhol, and Nam June Paik. Video art changed the way art could be presented from the everyday artist. It provided an inexpensive way for artists to have conceptual, performance, and experimental art in the form of film. It shook industry standards and provided a dynamic new form of art that was highly different from traditional painting and sculpture, thus giving more space for different types of artists to emerge and allowing for people who haven't studied fine art to also have a platform untethered to traditional art standards or mediums. Video art challenged what constituted art and what kinds of people could create meaningful or impactful art. Video art has paved the way for modern technology, and now we can film things from our phones or at the tip of our fingers.

The first picture I took is of a view I often see in my day to day life. As an artist that works mostly with digital media, I’m often found staring at a screen. I think this picture is very representative of me, as being an artist is very ingrained into my personality. I see my tablet and pen as an extension of myself.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I should post, as identity is something I still struggle with even today. So instead, I decided to put together a few pictures that I think may represent me the best, at least right now. In the top left is a picture of me during the snow storm. The bottom left is a picture of something I spend most of my time doing, drawing. To the top right and middle right are the subjects of which I take the most photos of: my cat Beans and my dog Lucky. And finally, the bottom left is a picture of a sculpture that I recently receieved an award for.

Filled Frame

Divided Frame

Perspective 1

Perspective 2