Through this exhibition, I wanted to experiment with how I used found imagery and create a personalized artwork whether that was through drawing objects around me, manipulating the original meaning behind a material, and collaging with magazines and newspapers. The first row of art featured in my exhibition shows three collages in which I focused on using found imagery from topical New York Times articles to symbolically comment on current events in my life. By displaying those pieces together, I aimed to highlight works that most apparently manipulated imagery that had a pre-existing meaning and was transformed into something entirely different through my art process. In theory, this would demonstrate the significance of materials when creating art with unique messages, using magazines from this past year allowed me to include themes of corruption, protests, political unrest, and isolation during the pandemic. The next two artworks were intentionally grouped together for the purpose of documenting my earlier experimentations with collaging. The compositions and even technique of the two collages highlight the journey I had undergone in reaching an individualized style. I had printed out images for “Blinded” and had explored digital collaging for “God is a Woman'' which were rather unconventional seeing as I had more freedom with the imagery and content featured in the piece. This prompted me to display the two works side-by-side to comment on the variety of types of collages in my exhibition. “Creature” was one of my long term projects that pushed my understanding of collaging and the final result was a nearly life sized disassembled collage of a creature’s body. Based on the mere size and also how the piece was so unique compared to the other works in the exhibition, I chose to feature it in a row by itself. The final three pieces of my exhibition were grouped together due to the fact that they all were collages that included imagery that I created myself. “Do Not Duplicate” used repetition and overlapping to create a collage, but the imagery was all drawn or painted by me. “Eye of the Hurricane” and “Untitled” both utilize a range of three dimensional materials while again including something hand drawn. Together, these works display collaging in some form to create art out of the objects or ideas around me.

The exhibition as a whole is a commentary on the important issues this past year, which was brought to light in a unique way through the process of using found imagery from magazines or taking inspiration from and drawing the imagery I see around me. The concept of distorting an image’s original meaning under the context of a magazine article and transforming that to something of my own creation gave the messages behind my own work a layer of meaning that was personalized and deeper than surface level observations. Understanding the impact of material use in each piece of my exhibition created depth and unified my art. Having a majority of the found imagery curated from magazines documenting this past year created a full circle in the sense that it was then used in my own artistic documentation of the current events that I’ve witnessed. This pandemic and the political unrest of the nation has been a creative inspiration given the immense impact it has had on my personal life. Through this art exploration, I’ve created work revolving around my time spent over lockdown and tied in themes of losing one’s identity which embodied this idea of isolation and losing yourself to the world around you. Having an abundance of magazines reporting government corruption and protests provided an opportunity to comment on those things from my own perspective. The digital aspect of this exhibition provided me with the opportunity to easily display my digital collage in a way that would have disrupted the harmony of a physical display. On the other hand, I feel like the texture and three dimensional aspects of some of my pieces haven’t been effectively captured in their photographs. I believe “Creature” would have benefited from an in-person exhibit because the scale of the piece is more impactful in relation to life sized viewers and each individual painting conveys the my intention of a disassembled collage more clearly compared to the digital version which is more confusing because they had to be added to a single white image inorder for me to properly scale and position each component. I hope that when viewing this exhibition, viewers will engage with questions about this past year has shaped them and how their surroundings are integrated into their individuality.