Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Project 1 - Hattie Mallot

Link to Vimeo:

https://vimeo.com/140077329



Artist’s Statement: Self Portrait


My piece, entitled “Self Portrait”, shows a girl drawing herself. The first picture she draws is a glamourized version of her, the way she would like to present herself to others. Deciding that this is not an accurate portrayal of herself, she erases the picture and starts over. This time, she includes her flaws in the picture, such as her messy hair and the bags under her eyes. This picture is more accurate, but is not a picture she wants to show others. She doesn’t want people to scrutinize her flaws! She scribbles out the face in her picture, marring the face she doesn’t like, and goes to erase again. When she does, her eraser tears holes in the paper, destroying not only the face she was drawing, but also the surface on which she was drawing. Frustrated, she crumples up the paper and throws it away. This piece is about self-representation and the way we present ourselves to others. There is a disconnect between how we see ourselves and how we want others to see us. In an ideal world, the glamourized versions of ourselves that we show to other people would be our true selves, and there would be no disconnect. My movie aims to show the elusiveness of self-representation that shows our best selves and still feels true who we are. As the protagonist struggles to find a representation of herself that she can be content with, the violence with which she treats her materials destroys her representation entirely. In the end, the protagonist gives up instead of trying again, though that’s not to say that she can’t come back to it later. After all, the sketchbook is still lying on the table.

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