Forever Free Collage/Painting
The prompt for this collage was to choose an issue that we feel strongly about and make a piece about it while avoiding tangents and using Gestalt Principles.
The issue I choose to work with is that of Albinos in Eastern Africa, mainly Tanzania, not being seen as humans, but more like ghosts. The problem with this is that the people, for the most part, believe that because the Albinos are not human, they do not die, just merely disappear. Therefore, Albinos are immortal and their bodies are good luck. They cannot die, so it is not wrong to kill them or seriously maim them.
People seeking good fortune, for example business men or miners, often pay large sums of money to get ahold of Albino body parts. Parents of Albino children are selling their children's limbs, sometimes even their lives, to make some money to live by.
The body parts can also be used in potions and remedies by witch doctors for the patrons who are willing to pay more.
It is a disgusting practice that needs to come to an end, but first it needs to be brought to attention.
There are many news stories that can be found with more information.
In this piece I have Albino children sitting on a stage as if they are on display to the world, as if they were circus performers or something else people can identify as freaks. Each child has a price tag on them representing how much they are worth to the Albino Body Market.
The piece is simply titled "Body Shop," giving an allusion to something completely trivial, making the meaning of the piece just a bit more clear.
In the Forever Free painting, we simply had to recreate the collage using a section of realism, stylization, and abstraction. Whether the meaning was kept in the piece or not did not matter. I choose to keep the meaning in my piece and decided to use a primary color scheme to make it feel again, like a circus, but also to create a child-like feel. The juxtaposition of the playful color scheme with the children being sold off gives an eerie feel of hopelessness. The features of the children were all removed to show how they are not individuals, just merely pieces of meat to be sold.
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