This piece was inspired by the provocative and vulnerable testimonies of Hapa people in the article “Part Asian, 100% Hapa: A Retrospective.” written by Kip Fulbeck. We display the splits within one’s identity with the use of flags as symbols of ethnicity and culture. We also utilize the image of a face to highlight society’s pattern of profiling someone based upon their appearance and features and confront this practice by exhibiting that there is more to people than what is taken at face value.
By fitting the U.S. flag on his face like a mask, we wanted to show how nationality and citizenship force us to claim allegiance to one nation or the other, even if we may identify as multicultural. The model also identifies as Chinese-American, was born in the U.S., and was raised culturally Chinese. This relates to the term “situational identity” where one’s identity shifts depending on the situational benefits or privileges they may receive.
This was shot on an iPhone 10 on Portrait Mode and edited using Adobe Photoshop.
I like the idea of putting a mask on the face to represent that he is American, good idea. Yet you can add more to depict the conflict and the situational identity you had in the artistic statement. Overall good work.
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