To understand culture you must first make the strange familiar and the familiar strange. In other words, most of us New York City residents are unaware of the culture that surrounds us because we pass it every day, but sometimes it takes a turning it upside down, flipping it backwards, isolating it from its surroundings, and completely stepping out of the frame. Culture is an identity that has five features:
It has a sense of sight that sees a kilt. Almond eyes. The “boot” of Europe on the map. Come si scrivano i parole. The words of a book that began a revolution.
It has a sense of hearing that picks up ze many aksentz. The rhythm of Celtic stepdance. A Hail Mary whispered at the altar.
It has a sense of smell that detects incense in a dimly lit room. Smoke from the Barbecue on Memorial Day. The aroma of hot green tea.
It can taste savory platanos and Dragon Roll.
It has skin that can be pierced or painted the colors of a Navajo tribe.
Therefore, culture is a face.
Although I took an abstract approach to the Cultural Encounters Collage Project, my intention is to show that faces, like cultures, are ubiquitous, yet they appear from the least expected places. My focus was man-made still life, nature and food instead of people because people are more likely to be mentally categorized into cultures that we are familiar with, especially those with distinct facial features. I want my viewers to see ordinary things in a new light. By rotating photos of familiar objects, taking extreme close-ups and cropping out the surroundings, the viewers of my presentation are confronted with an abstract composition. Does it actually resemble a face in nature, or because its grouped with other things that look like faces?
Although the composition of the “faces” in my collage are quite simple, consisting of two “eyes,” a “mouth” and sometimes a “nose” and “ears,” discovering the faces was the most challenging part of my project. I realized that although something may resemble a face to me, it does not mean that another person will easily see the same thing, so I tried my best to keep my viewers in mind. Most of the faces are quite small—I got up close and personal. Whenever I saw the opportunity to design a face with a group of objects that were close to each other, I did. Yes, some may call it “staged,” but all I’m really doing is altering the composition to create an illusion. Photographers and painters do that all the time.
Using objects and food as a representation, I grew more interested in the role of the face in the human body. It’s beautiful that many cultures and nationalities can be identified in a person through their facial features. This part of the body is probably the most judged; often times it accidentally gives away certain thoughts and emotions that we’d rather keep concealed. It serves as an individual’s identity, and it is said that the proportions of a beautiful face is in accordance with the mathematical golden number that was discovered by the Ancient Greeks.
With that said, meet Whatsherface to observe my journey in search of faces. (Click on the link to the Prezi and wait for it to fully load.)
