mixed media, collage

“The SOS Art Retrospective artworks were mindblowing when taking a look at them. I had already been to many art museums as it helps sooth my mind and I like looking at what makes me happy. The SOS artworks don’t only make you happy though they make you think. That’s really the whole point of them is getting their message across and getting you to think of them. No matter what medium you could tell that the person who made it really cared about the subject and put emotion into the movement, color, shape, whatever was on their canvas or in their mind. I noticed another thing though while scrolling through it. A lot of the artworks were shaped off very similar things and there were a lot of subjects that hadn’t even been touched by any of the artists. This made me upset that there’s so many subjects not a lot of people care about but also happy because that leaves me open to talk about one of these subjects and make more people care about it.
My subject matter was Domestic Violence something that goes on in a lot of households but not a lot of people speak up about. While I could have researched and read other peoples stories I didn’t and it’s not like I didn’t care because I didn’t have to. I had witnessed it myself from preschool to the beginning of this year. It may sound like I’m one of those America’s Got Talent people who just sputter on about their trauma hoping you’ll feel bad about them but that’s not the case or how I’m trying to come off. I care about this subject because I’ve seen and felt how it can affect someone. My mom who’s the main victim used to be very outgoing and a healthy person before an abusive relationship but afterward she’s more observed and deals with a lot of mental issues. Not only are the partners affected but so are their families and the people around them and I feel like a lot of people don’t get that. It can make a person doubt themselves for the relationship and even blame themselves even when leaving the person things don’t just automatically get better.
I came up with this idea after seeing that no one had touched this subject in the SOS artworks and no one in my class was planning on it either. After living through it I wanted to spread it around and not normalize it as so many people do. I tried to create the image of my mind of how looking at it when I was little made me felt and I really based the piece off of that.
The woman in the piece is collaged randomly out of blue and white pieces of paper with one eye being made together and one being the cut out of a real eye. I did this to symbolize a Chinese traditional kintsugi which are blue and white plates who symbolize beauty and when they crack they crack into gold showing that it only gets even more beautiful. I wanted the woman to be made out of this with the gold cracks to show even the more and more she broke from the abuse she was still beautiful in a positive light and she wasn’t a bad person because of it. Her face like the eye isn’t proportioned right and it isn’t pretty for a reason. Someone who’s being abused isn’t pretty and it shouldn’t be romantic as many people do romanticize it in movies. The hand is made of newspaper with the blood on its hands to show that the abuser isn’t the only one abusing the weekend but also the news and media who really normalizes abuse and doesn’t bring it up in the right fashion which can affect the person’s mind on what had happened to them.
The message I hope I communicate to the audience is that no matter the abuse you go through you can still shine and get through it but that doesn’t mean it’s to be taken lightly or pushed in the shadows because it’s so normalized. It’s an ugly thing and you have to realize the signs while you can.“