Wednesday, May 3, 2017
The Fun Life of The Struggle
Demons
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| A colorful world full of Demons |
I wrote this to explain my demons and i wanted to share it :)
I decided to put a semicolon in my life and continue my story, a semicolon is a promise to myself that I would never willingly end my sentence, and end my story. A semicolon is a reminder to open up conversations between myself and other humans about mental illness because as difficult as it is, what’s more difficult is feeling stigmatized, or like you failed, or like people are feeling sorry for you. There is no question that the stigma surrounding mental illness inhibits struggling humans from finding the help they need. I find this absolutely heartbreaking because I know I am not alone when I say that depression destroyed my childhood, my relationship with friends, my involvement in school, and much, much more. So if one out of every four people struggle with mental illness, why did I feel like I was the only person who had experienced this before? If 25 of every 100 people I pass on the street have clinical need for psychiatric care, then why did I feel like I had to hide my shaky hands every time I would panic. It would hit me harder than a train or feel like I had to shove every suicidal thought on a shelf behind old dictionaries and behind every classic novels where no one could find them. Nearly 30,0000 people die from suicide every year and that’s more than twice that of HIV and AIDS. But still I am embarrassed to tell you that sometimes I can’t get out of bed in the mornings, that some nights I cry myself to sleep because I don’t want the thoughts of suicide to take over me. Let me make his clear for those who don’t know me well: “I am not who you would expect to be depressed.”
“I am not who you would expect to be depressed”. You cannot put me in a box decorated with black nail polish and frequent trips to Hot Topic because you don’t wear depression like a necklace or put anxiety on like a hat. You cannot spot depression because of what you see. I am depression and I am not the silent girl dressed in all black hiding in the back row of your lecture hall. I am depression and I am the perfect picture of a 21 year old sorority girl in NJCU. I am depression and I am oversized sorority t-shirts and jeans that I have to hold with a belt, starved hips that the greek girls envy so much. I am depression behind a stylish hair that cover half of my face most of the times and beautiful makeup that takes me hours to do.
No one ever knew that my illness had crippled me so severely that I spent 20 hours a day wrapped in blankets in my bed, trying desperately to fight away the bitter cold that had taken over my heart. I hid myself in a social life, I call 15 women on my campus by the name of sisters, but sometimes I’m still laying at the bottom of a lake unable to breathe while effortlessly everyone around me grow gills. Because no one tells you what to do when your life becomes a 10-car pile up during rush hour traffic, because no one tells you to tell the very people who framed your life and hung it up on the wall for everyone to admire the girl who has it all together that nothing is right anymore. No one tells you what to do when good days fall so severely that you can’t remember the last time you woke up and didn’t want to die.
Every 16.2 minutes, someone takes their life. In the time you’ve been listening about the crippling disease that made me want to take my own life, someone took theirs… And still, we shame and stereotype and stigmatize the people who need the most help and teach our children that having to ask for help is something we should feel bad about, when in fact sometimes strength is admitting that you don’t have any left.
Oftentimes I feel like depression ruined my life. It took so much that it’s become a desperate desire for something good to come out of this. My hope is that because of my experience, I can be an advocate and a champion for mental health awareness, that I can start a conversation with girls in my colony and students on this campus and hopefully influence someone’s life for the better. I am lucky, yes I am lucky because I live in a beautiful home with a beautiful family. I am lucky because I have a stepmother who raised me as her own daughter and believed me when I said I was depressed and didn’t make it sound like my fault. I am Lucky because I have people that supports me. The problem is that people struggling for worse than me don’t have half the support I do.
For the people who cannot champion for themselves, every day that I say no to the dark thoughts depression tried to tangle my mind with, I am winning a battle that society has not made easy to win. I’ve learned a lot from my struggle with depression. Every day is another day of endless waves of transformation and as much as I wish it didn’t hurt so bad when it hit me, I can’t say that I’d change who I am, the struggle I went through. I decided that my story wasn’t over yet, and let me tell you, you do heal, you do become stronger. I don’t know what it would take to frighten me, but it will have to be something big. I am, in fact a survivor.
Final Project
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| Herbert Sotamba, No matter what people say, I will always slay, 2017 |
The subject was to make LGBT communities to be happy
with their lifestyle. Gran Fury talked
about HIV/AIDS awareness for others to know about. I wanted to make a similar post which he made
of kissing does not kill. My goals was
to make people know everyone has two different side of them. Some do one like to show their other side
because might care what society got to say.
I want the viewers to see my both side of me because I live my life not
caring what people said people I do what I want. For example, I when to New York and decide to
take a picture in one of my sexy costume.
I was scared at first because I have never showed my body in
public. People out they have a better
body than me which was all I thought about at first but I wanted to end that
for good. I wanted the viewers to see I am
can go out in public without caring.
The difference from my midterm self-portrait is that I
did not show no fear in my final self-portrait.
I did not even think on what people were saying of me because I was just
excited to have a positive message in my final self-portrait. The quote that I made up was “No matter what
people say, I will always slay”. All the
negative comment people would say about me made me become stronger. It was an image to show more of myself rather unlike the midterm. People would see the both side of me being friendly and enjoying my skin.
I would categorize my work for freedom into what
society does not let me live. Slay to me
means destroying all native energy that is around. Each day I slay because I know everything
about me is beautiful. I do not have the
right image as all man are seen in social media because I am skinny. I want to show everyone including woman to
just do something crazy once in your life and show skin no for someone but for
yourself. I did not care if people were
looking at me because of the pimples I have in my chest and back. I make every scene of my life as a
runaway. I focus to reach to the end
were I have accomplish my goal into becoming someone in life without looking
side to side because I am slaying.
. 
Final- Body Acceptance
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Alexandra Rosario, Love Who YOU are, 2017
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The topic of my project is LOVING YOUR BODY. I named it loving your body because as previously stated in my midterm, I would like to help people embrace their body and be happy with the body they have. This project is inspired by how society is looks at the body image of an individual. It is Important to me that people accept themselves how they are and are not let down by what other people say.I decided to continue the same theme as my midterm because I was truly inspired and motivated to show my classmates that being yourself and accepting who you are is all that matters. You must love yourself before being able to love someone else. When deciding what i wanted to do for this final project I looked back at my midterm project and seeing the reaction of how my professor and classmates reacted about how confident I was with myself and explain how my body was being judged by my own family members. My project is a mini collage of inspirational pieces of different magazines. Ana Mendieta's work is what kept me motivated to continue my project as body acceptance because she was so confident and made beautiful work exposing herself in her work. I think my images shows a sense of confidence and body acceptance and shows that I have been motivated to love myself and what I look like. The difference between my first project and the last project had changed a lot because my first project I based it more on the influence John Berger had on me about loving yourself and how mirrors can make or break you. This final project was inspired by Ana Mendieta's work in nature and body acceptance is what made me think about making my project a tree shaped as a woman with curves and out of her branches come out different inspirational saying I found in a magazines.
Final Self Project (Connect & Disconnect to Nature)
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| Rosa Garcia, Am I Alive, 2017 |
For my final project I decided to paint an image of nature and disconnect to nature. I was inspired by Ana Mendieta and Remedio Varos. I wanted to present a simple (minimal) painting exploring the idea of three separate parts of nature and my soul connections and disconnections.The image itself has a rose to show the beauty of nature as well as symbol of me. I wanted to show the different colors of rose to show that no color pertains to self and nature. Everyone and everything is a different color representing different aspects of self. I wanted highlight the light of it all separating it from the dark background.The beauty of nature , in my eyes, is the colors of my surroundings. This leads to the center of the piece which is the eye. The eye bleeding is for the constant sights I see and abide to as well as the pain from the struggles in life (personal situations). This is the disconnect to nature. We are what we see in a sense, and not many look around and embrace what’s around. The materialistic takes over. The eye is the perspective of the outside and inside as well as the sacrifice of ourselves we have giving into the aspects we don't pay attention too. We bleed to suit the eyes of others . The butterfly is the soul flying away. Specifically my soul. I feel that I am always changing and adjusting, flying away from what I was. Change is the only thing that is permanent. The colors chosen for the butterfly were light and cool tones, to show an opposite of the rose but also highlighting the light again contrasting from the dark background. The butterfly is a connection and disconnection, we fly away from what we should embrace which is the disconnection. The connection is the butterfly itself shows a form of growth. We are following a cycle of life but we are the ones in charge of what to do with it.
I chose this image because originally I was working on something surreal and heavy. It wasn’t the best representation of myself. I wanted more me in the image. I wanted a dark background. I used various paints to create a gradient. I blended a lot of colors in order to create the right tone. I think when someone sees the image, they think of simple things. They do not see the hidden messages. The only emotional part of the image is the eye itself. The reaction to the rose is “it’s beautiful”. This project is different from my previous project in many aspects. There is less going on. It’s a painting rather than a collage. It still shows my style just in a different perspective. What made me change and try something new is the journey of discovering a different art. I wanted to paint and because I did, I fell in love. It’s not perfection but it’s improved in time. Painting is so detailed and technical. The group project also inspired me connecting surrealism in a minimal way like Remedio Varos did. I felt so connected with paintings and darkness in the paintings that I wanted to show my own form of light and dark. I also wanted to show nature within in the picture. I was inspired by Ana Mendieta and her form of representation. I wanted to take some qualities of her themes of disconnections and connections to nature.
self -love
For my final self-portrait
I decided to create a slideshow of photos I have taken over the past two weeks
and a few from before. The concept I was going for, was that of self-love., too
many years I have been ashamed of myself and my body, things that I don’t have
that much control of. But when I started this class and we looked at artists
like Cindy Sherman, Frida Kahlo, and even Ana Mendieta, I felt a sort of pride
in myself. these women unconsciously started a revolution inside me. they
taught me that there is beauty and safety in all of your insecurities. Before
this class I enjoyed capturing images, but not of myself, but this class
prompted me to turn the lens onto myself.
I decided to create a
video, or a slideshow of photos of myself, photos of me embracing myself and my
body for about two minutes, in contrast to my last project being a painting on
canvas. My midterm was on the concept of growth, whereas my final is
centralized on self-love and body positivity, which are completely pivotal in
growing in every aspect of your life. it took me a while to come to that
realization, that there was no way I could’ve grown as a person if I didn’t began
loving and caring for myself as well as the world around me.
NB: I tried to add the audio of the poem to my video but my mic on my laptop broke, so I have attached here a poem entitled : "It Gets Easier" , by me.
They say it gets easier
But they never tell you about the journey it takes to get to the easy
They never tell you about how you'll can't look at yourself in the mirror
Or how the only way you'll fall asleep for the next few years was after hours of crying
Crying tears that could fill every bathtub in every city in every country , in every planet.
Crying tears so bitter and blameful
Bitter and Blameful towards yourself
Being bitter and blaming yourself
Blaming yourself for being in the wrong place at the wrong time
Blaming yourself for not screaming loud enough
Blaming yourself for becoming helpless at the hands of a man who seemed to become deaf of the sound of the word no
Blaming yourself for seeing his face in every face of every person who wore their heart on their sleeves and was rooting for you
Blaming yourself for hating yourself.
They never tell you that before you get to the easy, you must first past through the blame.
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