Myth, Home and Self-Portraiture

Wendy Red Star and Kambui Olujumi convey the themes of home, identity, personal narratives through imagery in their artworks. Wendy Red Star works mainly focuses on home identity. In her exhibit, there were art displays on her Indian culture and how it reflects upon her identity. While Kambui Olujumi focuses on personal narrative and identity in his artwork. He uses film, graphics, and voice over to tell a story to his audience.

Wendy Red Stars constructs her identity and home through a timeline. In her timeline, she includes pictures from her childhood to her adolescent years. Beside the pictures, she wrote little notes that indicated what the pictures meant and how these moments in her life are important. In one of her notes, she writes a poem entitled “I am poem” beside a younger picture of her. The poem highlights what it means to be a Crow Indian. Throughout her poem, she describes traditions in her family. For example, the lines “I wonder when I will learn how to shanl dance. I hear the sound of the pow wow drums.” She is describing her childhood experiences through her perspective. She uses literary devices so the audience can visualize her childhood experience. She also mentions wanting a unicorn in her poem which reflects on the idea of mythology. A unicorn is a mythical animal that is described as desirable and not able to capture. In addition to her timeline, she uses photography to show her culture and her home. In her series “My home is my tipi sits” she includes images of houses, cars, and signs.

On the other hand, Kambui Olujumi uses the art of animation to portray his identity. Specifically, in the animation, he used story-telling to captivate his audience. The film was about a guy who works in an orphanage that goes into a new world. To further push his story-telling he used images of constellations. Constellations reflect on the idea of mythology because create images that represent multiple things like animal, Greek god, or an inanimate object.

Furthermore, these same principles can be applied to the self-portrait project because myths play a part in how the world perceives us based on our astrology sign, race, background and etc. If I could add a myth to my self-portrait presentation, I would choose a folk tale story like “Beauty and the Beast”. As a child, I was interested in the story because it taught me how to week beauty in people's character rather than their appearance. In my project, I would try to create images that are distorted but yet beautiful and meaning. Another thing I would do is try to mix images together to create one meaningful image.