Author Archives: Erica Siudzinski

Erica Siudzinski

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Hi, my name is Erica. Everyone knows me as the girl with the unpronounceable last name. I’m from Long Island and I grew up in multiple towns, moving around due to schooling for most of my life. The city has always been a backyard to me, what with my dad working here for most of my life and living here for the better half of his. He’s been my unofficial tour guide and role model, drawing me into the cultural experience of the city. From the age of 6 until I was 11, I was a full-time gymnast. I also played piano and soccer.Though I spent much of my life learning to sew and salivating over fashion design and runway models, it is more of a hobby to me now. My time growing up was spent between plays, musicals, and films. As I got older I discovered opera and concerts, both of which I’m a frequent attendee. I grew up around books and poetry, so I love to write poetry, prose, and even essays. I’m the most argumentative person you’ll ever meet; not that I’m contrary, but I love well-developed discussions on larger-than-life subjects from philosophy to psychology.

I hope to be an English major and possible Philosophy minor. I love to listen to music and go to concerts, especially alternative music. However, I enjoy nearly all types of music and I’m always open to new musical exploration. I hope to travel a lot in my life and learn a new language since I have incredible wanderlust for all the beautiful places I’ve yet to see. I enjoy British television and good film and spend a good majority of my free time watching these and picking apart every moment. There’s nothing more exciting to me than being surrounded by the sounds of the city; it’s an insistent hum that I’m slowly tuning my ears to.

What I like most about art is that it surrounds us. Anything could be art. The way someone walks is art, the spacing of the trees is art, the swaying of the people on public transportation is art. Looking around, we don’t often see how beautiful everything here is, how everything around us is conducive to a life filled with art.  We live in a world that is so perfectly and artistically designed. The city is art. Life is art.

Sara’s Self Portrait

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Sara Camnasio’s self-portrait performance was one of cultural exploration and discovery, marked by humor and personal details. Sara portrayed the cultural shift in her life from Italy to New York through food, pictures and language. Starting with a fast-paced and somewhat exasperated-but-loving conversation with family in fluent Italian, set against the rolling hills of Italy, Sara crafted a picture of her life before she came to America. Despite it being in a foreign language, her conversation drew the audience in as the conversation we’ve all had with family. “Yes, yes I’m fine, Mom,” punctuated with a short and succint “Ciao, Ciao, Ciao” as though her relative wouldn’t get off the phone.

Hanging up, she spent some time revealing facets of her personality that she couldn’t live without; Sara shoved ring after ring onto her fingers, as if her journey couldn’t be made without them. She then ate some pasta to emphasize the mainstay of her culture. Finally, she bridged the gap between her two worlds on opposite sides of the room by literally jumping across it, her computer telling us that it was 2009, the year of her immigration to America. Arriving here she sighed contentedly before revealing a picture of Central Park, a far cry from the rolling hills of Italy. However, these two images connected the audience in their natural quality. Though the city is obviously a very different environment for Sara, she sees the role Nature has to play in both settings.

Settling down in New York, Sara picked up an American flag and surveyed it contentedly before smiling and covering herself in it, cloaking herself in her new American identity. However, her rings remain as a symbol of the parts of her personality that won’t change despite her cultural shift. She looked at her museum pass and exclaimed how cool it is before putting it on and opening herself up to all the cultural opportunities that New York has to offer. She babbled excitedly into her phone to her friends, a scene reminiscent of her phone call with her relative in Italy, whilst eating some humorous, stereotypical American food: McDonald’s. The parallel of this scene to the scene in Italy bridges the gap between the life Sara lived in Italy and the one she now lives in New York; it is essentially the same picture, the same language, but a different setting.

Even though I was filming it, I tried hard to watch it through my own eyes for the full perspective. As an audience member, I couldn’t help but relate to her fashion fetishes, her exasperation with her family, and her joy to be in a new culture. With her self portrait, Sara crossed the barrier of culture not only in her own life, but in the audience’s mind. She created a universal language for the audience through themes such as family, food and personality which are mainstays in everyone’s life, no matter their background. In a land where everything is different for her, Sara has managed to convey exactly what we all share, no matter our differences. Her self portrait is a portrait of New York; though the city is a medley of many peoples from many cultures, at the end of the day we are a cohesive body of citizens with a unique identity as “New Yorkers” who all share in the same “language” of the city.