In my free time…
In my free time, I love to paint, draw, and do graphic design. My senior year of high school I made a series of mixed media art pieces that are a commentary on the nature of the media in 21st century politics, which are featured in the gallery below.
This piece establishes the social commentary in the series: the lack of trust in today’s media. Today, trust in journalism has been reported to be at its all time low. Thus, I manifested a lack of trust in the media as a series of viruses creeping into and taking over the newspaper. I utilized shiny white paint marker to render the viruses glossy—to suggest that there is something enticing about the viruses entering the media, as the facts of a story are occasionally skewed by ulterior motives for entertainment purposes.
The second piece illustrates how the lack of trust in media is a global problem, largely due to the globalized nature of 21st century life. In this piece, I created a map of the world composed of newspaper to manifest how society is defined by the stories and events that transpire in our lives, which is captured by the media. However, I replaced the oceans with a black backdrop and three impending viruses, almost like planets orbiting the earth to suggest that there is something ill looming beneath the stories.
This piece illustrates how journalism is an integral aspect of our lives. We consume the news like we do our coffee or tea in the morning, as both are institutions in many people's daily routines. This piece illustrates the information of a news story being evaporated away to highlight how incomplete information and low trust in journalism renders stories meaningless to readers.
This piece is a continuation of Morning Coffee, I continue the metaphor of coffee or tea being comparable to the media we consume. However, in this piece, I replaced the sweet sensation of sugar or milk, often added to coffee, with black sludge. This is to manifest how the facts of a story are like the base of coffee or tea in that they are essentially the same for all. In reality, people add milk or sugar to customize their coffee, however, here the only option is the black sludge, to comment on how objectivity in today’s media is nearly impossible.
This piece comments on the interaction of 21st Century technology and journalism. In an increasingly digital age, journalism spreads instantaneously with social media platforms propelling news to spread as the story unfolds. This piece includes excerpts from 3 different news sources describing the same incident, to illustrate how quickly a story can be distorted because of the immediate spread of journalism with technology.
This piece is indicative of the start of a shift in the series’ works. Here, rather focusing on the problem, I shift focus onto the solution. I hand wrote the words of Barack Obama’s 2008 primary speech in the background, as they were words of unity, with the famous line “we are not as divided as our politics suggest.” These words, layered above an image of people unifying, evoke the theme of unity. However, encroaching upon this unity is the news, twisted into vines confining the words, suggesting that the polarized media is part of what causes division in today’s world. The piece comes to closure with a message of hope, underlining how in spite of the division today, the media was not always that way, and there is hope for ameliorating the trust in the media.
This piece aims to contrast the first piece of the series. In the first image, viruses encroach upon and pollute the news. However here, flowers take root in the once corrupt news to illustrate a new beginning and the media changing from a disease-breeding environment to a healthy one suitable for life, mirroring the hope for the growth of journalistic integrity.
