MizzMixedUp @mizzmixedup - Tumblr Blog

Work in progress.

Yes We Can! ¡Si se puede!

Maya in Nebula

Business card swag. Check.

Turns out Western art history is basically just 500 years of women trying not to talk to men.

lmao, wish i'd seen this in my art history classes.

C'est moi!

The Loop: Black Women in American Cinema

Gillian Kümm, 2014, gifs

Artist Statement:

My final project is a very brief historical exploration of the portrayals of African American women in film. Spike Lee once called movies “the most powerful medium in the world” and there is certainly truth to its significance. The images we collectively see on the screen are very influential, they are living and breathing stereotypes and concepts that form a sense of mainstream identity. I wanted to focus on these stereotypical representations of Black women; often shown as sassy, sexual, or submissive. Gifs provide an excellent medium to forever capture these images and allow them to live and breathe as the sometimes harmful manifestations they are. The looped action of these subjects suggests a cycle of continued stereotypical representation of Black women in film.

Gifs (from top to bottom):

Blackface Mammy in Birth of a Nation (1915)

Josephine Baker dancing the original Charleston (1925)

Hattie McDaniel in Show Boat (1936)

Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers (1941)

Lena Horne in Words and Music (1948)

Pam Grier in Foxy Brown (1974)

Angela Basset in Waiting to Exhale (1995)

Halle Berry in B.A.P.S (1997)

Viola Davis in The Help (2011)

Lupita Nyong'o in Twelve Years a Slave (2013)

Final Project Proposal

I really enjoyed making gifs and for my final project I would like to work in this medium. Throughout the semester and in the past I've focused on depictions of women of color and I'd like to continue this theme in this piece. I have also been studying women in film and thought the portrayal of black women in American cinema would surely bring up some interesting images. As a woman of color I find a lack of humanistic portrayals of black women in cinema; they are often stuck with stereotypical roles that support racist tropes. I think these images are very important and powerful; I believe the gif will be a perfect format for an image that lives and breathes and impacts society and self image to this day. I'm thinking of calling the project something like "The Jezebel and the Mammy: Portrayals of Black Women in Cinema," something that references the history I'm trying to capture. I want to take a historical approach and make a series that pulls examples from each decade in particular.

Me during finals week.

#vangoghdontevenknow

theannalisablanco

Performance Project: Happy Dance

mizzmixedup

I like the irony of this piece and the sense of absence it conveys. We hear a happy song with no color, and only the shadow of the performer. Makes a strong statement!

sendbad66

This art piece was a little more challenging for me than many of the others. I had a lot of ideas but I was trying to get a specific message out in my work. I finally decided on the idea of abduction. Children are abducted all the time. The idea in my piece is that the abductor is...

mizzmixedup

These are definitely haunting images that add to the overall creepiness of your topic. I like the really significant choices you made with the costume and how these symbols are so specific.

mrs-hyland08

I had such a hard time trying to come up with a idea for a performance piece. I tried to come up with something meaningful and deep, and after continually coming up with nothing, i thought, “Maybe i’m just not deep.” Haha. I started trying to think about what makes me who i am, and what makes me happy. The only thoughts i had was my children, my husband, my family. This sort of turned into thoughts about what make children happy- the littlest, simplest things in life. Swinging, for me, is definitely one of those happy, simple things. And swinging in gorgeous sunny weather never hurt either. :)

mizzmixedup

I like the tone of this piece, the childhood theme definitely comes through and it looks like fun. It's great you did this on a sunny day with a nice blue sky, it adds to the feel good notion!

stellasstarship

First, this project was not easy for me. i don’t like to be the center of attention and I definitely don’t like to be filmed. I struggled even coming up with an idea and I wanted it to mean something. I decided to chose an alcohol related performance art. I don’t drink hardly at all, due to school, and working full time (which is odd because I work at a brewery).

When I first moved to Colorado and got a job at a brewery here in Boulder, I of course, like many people who have a honeymoon phase with a new service industry job, began drinking a lot. It was a quick way to make friends, and in no time Colorado was starting to feel like home.

After a few years of living here, things are continuously, yet gradually, changing. For example, drinking, being back in school, having an apartment that isn’t squalor, etc. p.s. I also now have an interlock in my car for 2 YEARS!! SO It’s not easy to go out and have a drink and go home.

Anyways, with that being said, when you don’t drink frequently your body literally treats alcohol like poison and I suffer awful hangovers because of that and probably because I am so migraine prone as is. Last night when I went out to grab some dinner with my boyfriend, I had a couple drinks, when we came home I decided I would do a performance piece which entailed drinking a beer in a minute (something I haven’t done in forever). That was the plan at least, and unfortunately I could barely even stomach it, so it took a little bit longer (hence the 1.40 length). It didn’t feel right clipping it, so I didn’t. I guess this project ended up meaning a little bit more to me than I anticipated. The American flag serves, obviously, as both an association with a cultural identity and also just the extreme acceptability and pressure towards alcohol in the first place!

All in all, last night I was up for about four hours after that beer with a horrible headache, and couldn’t sleep. I thought it was suiting.

eharrin3

I like your video and the fact that there is so much meaning behind it for you. I think the lighting and the silence in your video really add to it. Especially after reading your story. Nice job.

mizzmixedup

I really like the lighting and composition of this piece. Reading your statement its clear you have anxiety about being the subject and I personally like the kind of awkward aura it creates in the piece. The lighting really seems to reinforce this hesitation to be seen, and the possible "shadiness" of the action.

Artist’s Statement:

This semester I am also enrolled in a Poetry course and the idea of a spoken word piece intrigued me. We had an assignment to write a surrealist poem in which we wrote, nonstop, automatically for a set amount of time. Here I attempt the same premise: examining my own stream of consciousness. I timed myself and tried my best to keep speaking, letting my mind take me where it would. The result is hopefully an intimate and truthful surrealist spoken word piece. I choose to convert the footage to black and white in an effort to suggest another remove from the conscious.

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