Fraction: I See White People
Sometimes the artwork I create has absolutely no relevance to anyone other than me and my own little world. Other times (also known as the best times) there’s something going on aside from myself that allows me to shine a light on my artwork for a moment and say, “hey, I’ve been thinking about that, too”.
While reading my newest go-to blog, The SFist (Gothamist’s sibling blog in San Francisco), I came across a post by Brock Keeling that highlighted a small study, if you will, conducted by “San Francisco’s most important always-present queer activist,” Michael Petrelis. Michael examined the “official magazine of InterPride2009” and found that the pages of the magazine were covered with white people. His entire breakdown of data can be found on his blog.
As I’ve stated in a previous post, I’ve never interacted with so many gay and Asian-American men as I have since moving to San Francisco earlier this month. Throughout my life, I’ve been lucky to have a diverse group of friends. I’m aware that I’m a minority and that therefore, statistically speaking, seeing individuals like me in popular culture will always be less than seeing ‘the norm’ of white people. But that awareness doesn’t mean I can just ‘get over it’. I want to see images I can relate to just as much as the next person. I’ve taken on the idea that as a visual artist, I am responsible for helping shift the perception of popular culture towards something more diverse.
Michael’s interest in deconstructing Pride09 is something that I’ve done my entire life—with any glossy magazine, McDonald’s poster, or Adidas advertisement campaign—but most recently I translated the process into art objects.
Below is an image of a series of work I’ve titled, Fraction. I selected a magazine that is important in popular culture and noted the number of pages—that’s the denominator. Then I counted the number of Asian faces among those pages—that’s the numerator.
Then I slashed the hell out of the magazine! No no, I carefully took my favorite tool in the world—an Exacto knife—and carefully cut out the fraction into the pages of the magazine. I enjoy the sculptural quality that appears when the depth of the pages is apparent. The page on which the first image of an Asian man appears determines the depth of the cut. You can see the image of his face nicely framed by the fraction. My favorite part is the metaphor of the fraction bar aggressively slicing the image of the norm.
I would often share my artwork with close friends for critique. With this specific project, I was unsure of a concise idea so it stayed on the shelf for most of this year. It’s visually appealing in this time of recycling and ready-made artwork, but the idea was most important, and lately, I feel like the art world is like, so totally over questioning race and identity.
I like the blogosphere and everyone on it because there’s always someone thinking about the same stuff! I’m glad that Michael is out there and that he did his thang with that magazine because it gave me the confidence to share this artwork. As for a solution to the problem, oh god, who knows. That is one of many reasons why I have anxiety about being an artist: do we have to provide answers or just raise more and more questions? Sometimes I just wish I could shut up already.
So this Fraction series is by no means done, but these are some of the ideas I’ve been thinking about and manifested into physical objects. It’s a bit of a one note, but it is definitely in line with a lot of my interests as an artist, and more importantly as a breathing human being. We’ll see what happens as the project continues.
Life is fine and dandy, ain’t it? Whether or not you see a resemblance of yourself in popular culture could mean nothing to most people. But, most people in America are also white. I choose to be active about addressing my concerns and confusions, especially in the arena of race and gender. Adding to existing dialogues and capturing a snapshot of our current situation are two of many of my goals. Tomorrow, the pages of Rolling Stone could be filled, cover-to-cover, with images of Asian men, and so I’d have to find other ideas for my artwork. Until then, I’ve got a lot of sources of inspiration.
