i think i just almost set my apartment on fire

i hadnt been very satisfied with one of my old art projects, and so i set it on fire, kind of on a whim. i thought i could incorporate the ashes/remnants into this week's project, because id felt like my voice hadnt come out the way id wanted it to in the project. i felt that kind of suppression, whether self inflicted or not, is something that octavia paz talks a lot about in his project.

and with those good intentions, i set out to burn up the project i had done on paper. i think i probably should've planned the burning a little better though

the pictures don't really do the damage justice. i ended up losing control of the flame, and the whole thing just lit up. luckily, someone had left two cups on the table, and they both had some water in them, so i dumped it on the flaming paper i was still holding. have you ever seen the movie "signs"? that moment of providence felt like that.

it turned out the flame wasn't completely out though, so i ended up dropping it on reflex. on to my wooden table.

i ran to the kitchen and grabbed our water filter and just poured it all over. everything.

heres to hoping my roommates dont notice the mess and the smell of burning!

fiesta/tristeza

my concept for this project actually changed a few days before the deadline. originally, i'd been thinking about using the image of a bird flying freely out of a cage to comment that the bird can only truly celebrate freedom after having experienced imprisonment.

but when i started thinking about tristeza, and how i've experienced it, i started thinking about tears and a kind of solitary sadness. i also started thinking about the kind of materials i wanted to use. i wanted there to be a softness, a kind of vulnerability to the material i used for tristeza, and so i ended up cutting up an old sweater i had gotten oil paint on a year ago. i also liked the idea of putting fiesta on something sturdy, and so i picked up some wood from kroeber.

everything just kind of came together on its own when i was working on this project, and i was really happy with the result and what i felt like each thing symbolizes.

you cant have fiesta without tristeza

I've been thinking a lot about the idea of fiesta y tristeza, and how one cannot exist without the other. After a lot of trial and error, I finally put together an image that I hope others will be able to understand! Do you see what I see?

A fiesta cannot truly be enjoyed without having endured tristeza as well. Knowing sadness gives you the ability to know celebration.

I'm still working on how I going to incorporate this into my project, so we'll see where this goes. I've been thinking a lot about deconstructing and cutting up my work, so hopefully you'll see my efforts to take your advice too :]

aren't we all kind of playing a masquerade?

When I first started thinking about what I wanted to do for the project, I leaned really heavily towards interpreting the prompt quite literally, and incorporating masks and other sorts of ways things get hidden away. I was looking at a lot of different images...I'd recently watched a Spanish film called The Skin I Live In, which presented the mask in a sort of eerie and creepy yet provocative way. We'd also been looking at Frida Kahlo paintings in another class, and I was really attracted to the way she represented the mask as well, and what it might have meant to her.

The Skin I Live In...Elena Anaya is so beautiful in it. Her feminine features still come through, even with the mask on!








Girl with a Death Mask










Although these are both interesting concepts to me, I realized that none of them related to me personally. And so I thought long and hard about a time when I felt like I had to wear//was wearing a mask. Insignificant though it might sound now, I think the last time I felt like I was wearing a mask and hiding my true self was when I was a little girl trying to overcome my shyness. I was so shy that I remember feeling like no one knew who I was because I couldn't bring myself to act in a way that showed my true colors. I was a rather melodramatic little girl.

I'd started off playing with the idea of the intertwining of vida y muerte...eventually, it sort of morphed into an image that reminded me of swings, something I loved to do when I was little. I haven't decided yet exactly where I'm going to go with it, so I guess we'll just see tonight!

la muerte

the whole time i was reading the section on death, i basically had this image in my head:

death can feel like such an unknown and fearsome idea, yet the mexican is able to embrace it and make death a large component of the culture. it becomes something beautiful, and even alluring.


















shrouded in mystery, and maybe some danger, yet there is an irresistible quality too

anhelo

i had a rather hard time coming up with an idea for this week's project. 

anhelo. longing yearning desire craving eagerness

but when i began listening to chavela vargas' canciones, specifically "ella," i could feel and hear that emotion of anhelo with every sad pick at the guitar, every drawn out rhythmic strum. after looking up a translation of la letra, i almost immediately knew what i wanted to do.

theres just such beautiful imagery in the [english translation of the] lyrics. lost in a deep abyss. black as my luck. with tears in my eyes, i raise my glass. it definitely made me think of something with a lot of movement, a longing that manifests itself in a physical sense, maybe even distorting. yet there's a beauty to it, as reflected in the song. it made me think of dancers

the chapter on mexican masks also reminded me of anhelo. is the mexican mask there voluntarily, or a thing of tradition? does the mexican WANT to be "always remote, from the world and from other people. and also from himself"

i feel like the chinese culture has a very similar mindset, of believing that opening up and showing emotion is a sign of weakness. but it calls a question to mind: is the "fortress" built to keep intruders outside, or to keep the prisoner inside?

perhaps paz is right, and that is just the kind of attitude that allows the mexican people resilience and fortitude. i also found the image of the long-suffering, vigilant woman that paz describes. both man and woman, hardened by suffering, became a much more stoic and invulnerable shell.