Self Identity

This piece is called Umbrella, touching different points of what I consider my identity. Originally, I planned to make this work overly ornate, but I realized that was not how I saw myself and how I thought I saw myself. It took a few days of self inspection, looking at the clothes I pick, the songs I listen to, and paying specific attention to how I react to people and to my own thoughts. My self identity in this piece is reflected by various aspects. The tiger itself is an animal that has stuck with me ever since I was a child. In Hinduism, each household has a god and goddess over each  family name, and for mine it’s Durga who rides on a tiger. As an Indian, the national animal for that country is a tiger. The tiger in this piece plays more of a spiritual role than a formal role. It carries all of the interests I have at surface value, and yet, all the labels I naturally fall under. Each label has affected me in life in specific ways which I will disclose in my presentation. The music notes represents my synesthesia, something that affects the music I listen to and sometimes the sounds I hear. It also serves as a containment to keep the painting in the background secure. That aspect also inspired the name of this piece, as if the sheet music is a barrier to keep the tiger away from the liquid paint. One of my inspirations was Chitra Ganesh, an Indian visual artist in Brooklyn who also does collages, and her saturated color in her imagery is what inspired me the most.



 The collage itself is on a 3ft x 4ft canvas, that is covered with a variety of acrylic pour paint. The sheet music is Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata Movement 1, twenty three pages printed out on tracing paper so parts of the painting could be seen through it. The tiger was drawn on poster paper and colored with prisma colored pencils. All the images were printed from my personal desk printer. Everything attached to the canvas is easily removable, double sided tape is holding the labels, sheet music, tiger, and the images on the tiger.