Cauhboi:
Migueltzinta C. Solís
The Responsibility of Being Everything: Icons of Totality
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A professor in college wisely told us that "nothing should have to bear the responsibility of being everything." We were working on individual projects that quarter, and kept piling on new elements, despite our instructor's advice to "practice restraint." I had to learn the hard way that sometimes a piece is more effective when it is focused and... restrained.
Still, I can't pretend I haven't always been fascinated by religious tableaux, music videos, movie posters, album covers that attempt to state a grand totality of meaning and symbolism in a single image or sequence of images. If I was to be given the space of a single image in which I had to represent a little part of every culture I was part of, what would this look like? Contemporary internet based pop art has fed this idea -- meta, really: if the internet is an information melting pot, what does its offspring look like? I will be exploring the idea of the icon as a single image or tableau that is attempting to include every significant aspect of itself. I will draw my forms and images from American pop culture and intertwine these with icons from the subcultures I identify. In Mexican culture, the retablo has been part of Mexican-Catholic art for a long time. Retablos are small paintings that depict miraculous occurrences which are taken as offerings to specific saints and virgins. Sometimes drawn by amateurs, sometimes by professional retablo painters, they usually depict an instance when a believer's prayers were answered in a time of need, such as a car accident or shooting. I will also draw from non-white queer culture (white queer culture often shuns the use of pop icons in art) to explore how icons such as cartoon characters are also re-purposed for the use of self-representation. |