Candy Color Mind
Session Title
Additional Abstracts
College
College of Visual and Performing Arts
Department
Fine Arts
Faculty Mentor
Claudia O’Steen, M.F.A.
Abstract
My thesis body of work is an investigation of girlhood, materiality, and cultural identity as a young Asian-American woman through colorful craft materials and motifs of my childhood. The early 20’s is an integral time in life to figure out who you are, getting in touch with your cultural identity and processing your childhood. I have always been a bright and bubbly person, attracted to bright colors, soft textures, sweet and feminine imagery. I can always return to the motifs of my adolescence like a hand to hold onto as I face adulthood. Comfort items, such as stickers, crayons, Asian snack wrappers, garish costume fabrics and brocade Chinese silks eases my heart when I’m in turmoil, their familiarity grounds me in a time when my identity feels uncertain. Exploring my Asian identity in relation to American society and digging into the vulnerable aspects of myself that I’d rather not acknowledge are daunting tasks; the realizations I make about myself can be very emotionally taxing. Confronting dysphoria and revisiting past insecurities is difficult enough as it is. I want to make work that liberates me but comforts me as well. Deconstructing and investigating familiar childhood comfort items is the physical way for me to process abstract thoughts. I swaddle topics that can be hard to face in happy, bubbly imagery because reckoning with oneself and one’s identity is difficult enough already; sometimes it is necessary to tackle these issues with a sense of humor and playfulness rather than with solemnness.
Candy Color Mind
My thesis body of work is an investigation of girlhood, materiality, and cultural identity as a young Asian-American woman through colorful craft materials and motifs of my childhood. The early 20’s is an integral time in life to figure out who you are, getting in touch with your cultural identity and processing your childhood. I have always been a bright and bubbly person, attracted to bright colors, soft textures, sweet and feminine imagery. I can always return to the motifs of my adolescence like a hand to hold onto as I face adulthood. Comfort items, such as stickers, crayons, Asian snack wrappers, garish costume fabrics and brocade Chinese silks eases my heart when I’m in turmoil, their familiarity grounds me in a time when my identity feels uncertain. Exploring my Asian identity in relation to American society and digging into the vulnerable aspects of myself that I’d rather not acknowledge are daunting tasks; the realizations I make about myself can be very emotionally taxing. Confronting dysphoria and revisiting past insecurities is difficult enough as it is. I want to make work that liberates me but comforts me as well. Deconstructing and investigating familiar childhood comfort items is the physical way for me to process abstract thoughts. I swaddle topics that can be hard to face in happy, bubbly imagery because reckoning with oneself and one’s identity is difficult enough already; sometimes it is necessary to tackle these issues with a sense of humor and playfulness rather than with solemnness.
