Self portrait project

Poem: Who Am I? 

To the world, 

I am a black woman 

my skin glows 

against the sun 

as I carry the weight  

of the world 

on my shoulders 

To be women 

To be black  

means  

to be 

constantly 

fighting  

to be 

seen 

in a world  

filled with borders 

In my mind,  

I am black 

I am a woman 

my skin glows 

against the sun 

as I navigate 

through the world 

with an open heart 

I break borders 

I’m no longer invisible to the eyes of society 

I am my ancestors dream realized 

A beautiful soul with her head held up to the sky 

In my heart,  

I am an artist dreamer 

words   

sink 

beneath 

my brown skin 

As I dream 

As I create 

Artist Statement: The format of my self-portrait is a writing and visual.  The first format is a poem. The poem is about how I am perceived in the world as a black woman versus how I view myself. In my reflection of how I viewed myself I wanted to incorporate how I react to society viewpoints put on black woman.  I wanted to connect the poem to Jelani Cobb article “Missing the Story”. In her story she discusses, how the race can be misinterpreted. In addition, I wanted to emphasis on the idea of intersectionality in my poem.  The main idea of the poem is what does it mean to be black and women? The last line in the first stanza “in a world filled with borders” refers to the complications of how intersectionality is seen in the world. Some people in the society do not realize how being both can be effective in what determines your future.  My influence for the poem is Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou poems “Still I Rise”, “Phenomenal Woman”, and “I know why the cage bird sings” connect to who I am and my experiences in life. I used her poems as a reflection of what it means to be an African American woman. The next format is a digital art piece of me. The connection to the poem is a visual aspect of who I am. I collaborated with my colleague to create this piece. I was inspired by the Montclair Art Museum Exhibit collection on identity. The person that influenced the visual aspect is Howardena Pindell. She is a photographer, painter and mixed media artist. She uses her artistic talent to explore her place in the world. Specifically, I used her collection of “what remains to be seen” as inspiration. In her collection she used various of colors to create abstract pieces.  In regards to the meaning of the picture, the art piece represents faces of me in different hairstyles. Personally, my hair is a part of my identity because it gives me freedom to change. To have the freedom to change gives me room to grow and to be creative.  Overall, I created this work because I wanted to explore the ideas of intersectionality with showing and adding a mix of who I am. I also created this piece because I wanted to explore the ideas of who I am through an artistic eye. This work connects to my biography because poetry has always been a huge part of my life. As a child, I used poetry to cope with internal and external issues. Additionally, it also connects to how when I was a child, I did not view my race as a big deal until I grew older and started to explore the outside world beyond my neighborhood.  When I discovered how my race and my gender affected how other people viewed me, my whole view of the world changed as well.  Ever since then, I strive to break the stereotypes that the world has put upon me and prove that the world does not define me. I define me.