I
was really amazed at the creativity and the ideology of how this idea came to
be. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I
was looking at when I walked into the dark room. I wasn’t expecting a video at all. It was such an amazing/simple idea to convey
a deeper, hidden message. Honestly, I
have no idea where the idea for this exhibit actually came from but I do think
that it had to have come from personal experience. Kahinde Wiley is black and because of that I’m
very sure that he has been a victim of many types of racism living as a
minority. I think that this video
portrayed the idea of “fake it till you make it” or “don’t let people see what
you’re really going through”. Today we
have so many social media outlets like Facebook, Instagram, twitter, vine,
etc. It’s so easy to look on someone’s Instagram
page or Facebook page and see how “good” their life may be, but what we fail to
realize when we see these wonderful blog posts and Facebook updates etc. is
that these are real people who have struggles that we may not be aware of. Also
another part of the video that was portrayed more was the issue of race and
racism. The smile is a representation of
a tolerance of discrimination not only for the black community, but for any
minority. For the first half of the
video we see the men smiling and it seems like they’re doing it with very little
difficulty, but as the video progresses, the smile starts to fade. I think that is a really beautiful metaphor
of how we can only “smile” or “tolerate” things for so long before things
really start to affect us.
I like the connection with social media. I hadn't even considered how the art piece can relate to all of us, how we only show our best side no matter what may be going on beneath the surface.
ReplyDeleteI like how you made a very modern connection to the work. I read the description at the front of the room and that narrowed my thought to the past, when there is definitely in a modern context that is still very applicable.
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ReplyDeleteI agree there must have been past experiences with the "fake it 'til you make it" admonishment. Thank you for providing an application to current trends. It's fascinating how many articles have surfaced in the past two years concerning the false perceptions of people and their lives we see in social media. There is a quiet rebellion stirring.
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