Segment: El Anatsui in "Change"
El Anatsui's work is intricately beautiful. The work I researched is made of thousands of found metals, like bottle caps, strung together to create a fabric like tapestry. I definitely identify with El Anatsui's work the most. His life growing up and his story does not run parallel to mine, however his passion and push to create something meaningful, something different, that we share. I think of this concept of change constantly. To me everything around me is changing. The leaves always fall, our hair grows longer, our tempers shorter, then longer, then shorter again, people always leave, and love will always evolve to something new. In senior studio, my ideas have been changing since I started. From paper clips to wire to chains to and back, everything has added to the madness and help me in the process.
I chose Mallika Sarabhai: Dance to change the world. I chose this because of the word change, but the story turned out to be so much more.
Mallika Sarabhai started the talk by acting out a ancient Hindu story about injustice. She talked about a women being raped and how in countries around the world, we have become subservient to the higher power. She spoke about how it is art that in the language that connects people together. At first I thought that this did not connect with my theme closely, but as I watched more, I saw that it actually depicts exactly my mentality. There are important issues world wide happening that sise to be talked about. Through art and dance and forms of expressing is where the message emerges.
To me this represents change. People, probably random strangers, looking art beautiful art, feeding the world conversation.
I have a learning disability; one that I have been able to work with and even benefit from creatively. The world we live in has strong stereotypes to many ways of "categorization", and its barriers like those that I hope to get people talking about through art.