EXPERIMENTS

1

Letter to My Old Self

As I continued to research and self reflect on my mending project, I started to feel frustrated with myself since the situation felt out of my hands. I felt as if all my experiences were results of centuries of colonialism and systemic racism, and I couldn't do anything about it.

So, I decided to only focus on myself. Yet, the more I thought about my different layers of privilege I felt guilty and at loss of how to express myself. Through this letter, I wanted to dissociate from my personal experiences and talk to myself as an outsider in hopes of better understanding.

Use of third person narration.

Emphasize on compassion and forgiveness with myself.

Video Concept

After discussing with Teana about my personal and emotional experience with my mending project, she highlighted how I didn't allow myself to feel completely the range of my experiences and how I was my own barrier against mending.

For my video, I wanted to highlight the opposition between decolonization and an ingrained guilt and shame. As Uzma Rizvi stated, the academic norm has alienated us from the self and I felt that norm reflected when I wrote my letter.

I kept trying to sound formal and with authority. Kept editing the first draft over and over, to make sure my arguments flowed and made sense, instead of allowing myself to just write the full spectrum of experiences.

Self vs. Academic Norm

Decolonization vs. Systemic Racism

Acceptance vs. Guilt

2

Over-edited Selfies

Since quarantine started, I've spent most of my time using my phone. In efforts to save memory, I went over my photo galleries and erased a lot of unnecessary photos. I realized I had an incredibly large amount of selfies, and most of them were of my expressionless face staring at the camera. I had used these photos to test my attractiveness and self worth, scrutinizing every feature of my face.

The scrutinizing usually ended up in the selection of one photo to edit. I would change my eye color, shrink my nose size, thicken my eyebrows, change my chin, jaw and cheeks to my face appear slimmer. I was trying to fit into standards of beauty that denied my Latin-American appearance.

This process of editing made me acknowledge that this denial and shame of my culture affected a wide variety of my daily activities such as taking pictures for fun. I wanted to capture the thought process through this experiment.

Distorted Collage

Process of Nitpicking your best features to make your ideal face.

Face Compilation

Same as picking the best features, but this one highlighted features from other people. I thought it could imply a lot about influence or ancestry, showing how different systems and different cultures influence our own.

Style Inspiration

This Buzzfeed video and how they used comparison for beauty standards inspired my idea for dividing faces in different ways.

After looking at the video, I think its abstractness is limiting the message and meaning behind it. Since only my face is changing, it starts a conversation regarding physical appearance and beauty standards, instead of culture.

I applied three styles of over exposition and prefer the last one, where parts of my face switch to form one. However, at the moment the progression lacks any meaning is only visually appealing.

Maybe using images of traditional, western beauty standards can return to the message of colonialism, however this a theme different to my mending project.

Experiment 2

FOCUS ON MAIN SUBJECT, DON'T GO ON TANGENTS AND SUBTOPICS TO AVOID MENDING.

Feels like I am avoiding confronting the main issue of feeling ashamed of your culture, or internalized racism.

Experiment 1

This experiment made thought process visual through text. I wanted to highlight how I would limit and filter my thoughts to fit a norm or a standard of what healing was, instead of allowing myself to experience mending on my own. I wanted to do it through typography and simulation of writing.

After reading articles about micro-aggressions, healing trauma and radical healing, all of them agreed on recognition and validation as a first step. I feel that in order to start this healing process, I need to acknowledge how micro-aggressions have defined my identity and validate my Latin-American identity as a whole.

However, as much as I like the aesthetic of this video, I feel as if the message is not accessible. The text appears boring and the format from letter to video does not transfer easily. I struggled editing the text to make it more interesting, but overall it now seems like rambling, and sporadic subjects, instead of a cohesive message. The narrator now appears unreliable and self-centered, instead of willing to bring attention to a racial issue.

Do you want to be heard
or do you want to educate?

I think this experiment highlights this dilemma. This letter is too self-centered and translates as an internal conflict, rather than a conversation with an audience who can relate.

I would keep the format, but write a better text.

Westernizing/Colonializing My Face

Skin Whitening

Eye Color Change

Reflection of Internalized Racism

Nose Contour

Re-writting of the Letter

New format for photographs

My sister and I look through old photographs and searching for the ones we thought best represented the story.