I am going to share with you artists who relate to my research inquiry of identity, and how it is formed being an immigrant/child of immigrants, having a culture that reflects both mainstream American society, and also the country which my family is from which I very much feel connected to.
Karyn Olivier
Karyn Olivier is from Trinidad and Tobago, and she was raised both there and America. However, she received a decidedly American education. She does a lot of community-based projects. In her artist talk at CSU, she said she had been thinking about her relationship to Trinidad, and how she never questioned her West Indian identity. However, seeing as her education was American, she began to think about how she hadn’t read any classic Caribbean literature in a long time. She began to wonder if her ties to Trinidad were superficial. In response, she made a functioning library in a grocery store that sells West Indian foods, which housed exclusively Caribbean titles. By doing this, she expanded the idea of what is a consumable. It allows for her and the community to feel nostalgia for home, as well as celebrates their West Indian heritage. She blended economies, and the books were placed in unseen, underused spaces and sparse shelves. The community could check out books that reflected their identity and connected them to home. This literature was not part of the education they received in America. I felt really connected to this project-I was an avid reader growing up, and I frequented the public libraries in Fort Collins. I read classic children’s books and fairy tales, and popular series. I read Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books, Brandon Mull’s fantasy worlds with dragons and magic, Gail Carson Levine’s fairytale retellings, Louis Lowry’s Giver series, Margaret Peterson Haddix’s mystery and time-traveling historical fiction books, Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. I loved these books-and still do. I loved visiting new worlds through reading, but they were all written by white American and British authors. However, last winter break was when I started to notice that I was seeing books by Arab-American authors in the YA, Middle Grade, and Children’s sections, I was really excited. They also had a small Arabic section. I immediately checked them out for my niece. I wished I had had access to them growing up, alongside the books I read. It made me feel validated, and represented. My own writing now focuses on Syria and my Arab-American identity, and I love that I will be able to discover new authors who share my cultural background, while I can still read the classic American literature of some of my favorite authors.
Beth Lo
The second artist I researched is Beth Lo. She was born in Lafayette, Indiana. Her parents had recently emigrated to America from China. Her ceramic and mixed media work involves the themes of childhood, family, and Asian culture and language. She has exhibited internationally. She got her MFA in ceramics from the University of Montana in 1974. With her sister, she produced two children’s picture books. In her artist statement, she says “My work in ceramics and mixed media collage revolves primarily around issues of family and my Asian-American background. Cultural marginality and blending, tradition vs. Westernization, language and translation are key elements in my work. Since the birth of my son in 1987, I have been drawing inspiration from major events in my family’s history, the day-to- day challenges of parenting, and my own childhood memories of being raised in a minority culture in the United States. I use the image of a child as a symbol of innocence, potential and vulnerability”- Beth Lo. I interpreted these pieces to mean that immigrant parents try to pass on their culture, knowledge and language as much as possible, but children of immigrants can only really understand a fraction of what our parents have been through.
Helen Zughaib
The third artist I researched is Helen Zughaib. She is a painter (who mainly uses gouache) and multimedia artist living in Washington, D.C.. She was the daughter of a State Department civil servant, and her family left Lebanon in 1975 due to the Lebanese Civil War. She moved to Europe as a teenager and attended high school in Paris. She moved to the U.S. to study visual and performing arts at Syracuse University. Her work comments on cultural identity, family life, and the plight of refugees and displacement in the Middle East (the Arab Spring), and the Lebanese Civil war. She made a series of paintings titled Stories My Father Told Me, which is based on the folk tales and family history her Lebanese father told her, and includes stories of migration and displacement. She talks about Syria and Lebanon in these stories. I felt very connected to them, especially seeing as I grew up hearing similar things from my parents.
All of these artists follow the second and third currents of contemporary art. The second current “the transnational turn has generated a plethora of works of art shaped by local, national, anti-colonial, independent values (identity, critique, diversity)” (Smith 181). They also can be considered as part of the third current, “quite personal, small-scale offerings” (Smith 183) and “long-term collaborations with specific local communities…these are instances of small-scale, close-valued placemaking” (Smith 185). The second applies to all three artists, as they all make work dealing with identity, and the third I find also applies to Karyn Olivier, as she does lots of long-term community projects.