Description

My intention for this painting was to create a piece surrounding my identity as a result of being replaced in my newfound London environment. I had noticed that I had moments where I felt more disconnected to my culture, and moments where I had felt a desire to connect to my culture. Using the mirror ball as a symbol for identity and self, I intended to create two paintings, each of which displays one half of a mirror ball in the middle of the paintings. The two paintings display a radial movement, similar to Matisse’s The Dance, similar in composition with minor colour differences. In the painting representing my connection to my culture, the main drapery is red, with white accents, and the figures painted satirically more yellow than flesh. Meanwhile, the drapery colour of the painting representing my disconnect to my culture is the parallelled opposite. The piece intended to be displayed facing each other. This parallel placement is similar to the literal relationship between the self and a mirror. Although there are two physical pieces, through viewing the pieces in the reflections, the two paintings become one, composing the self.

My two paintings depict three nude figures, each one myself, surrounded in an ambiguous environment of drapery. The high contrast and dramatization emulate Caravaggio’s signature style. In fact, the poses in the paintings are found and replaced from Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio, which of course is inspired by the artist himself. I noticed this continual chain of artists taking and innovating from past works but adding their own filter of their individuality, as did Derek Jarman to Caravaggio, and I thereafter. Since this piece was about my identity, I felt that the source imagery was integral in the foundation of representing my self, for Derek Jarman was a queer artist, and my admiration of Caravaggio’s artistic style. Not only does the mirror display our physical representation, the infinite chain of artists that came before us, and inspire us, compose the self.

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