The Search//Shruti Sharma//2016-18
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These two years passed in a blur of adapting and adjusting to so many things and everything that happened helped me grow closer to so many wonderful people. My peers ended up becoming my safe space, my studio became my home, and my professors became my friends. Whitney, you’ve helped me grow up. You’ve made me realise that I can stand up for myself and my work and that I’m here for a reason. You let me follow the beat of my own drum and for that and everything else; thank you. Kim, you helped me realise that I had so much growing to do, you taught me to investigate, make mistakes and come to terms with failure and work towards making things better. Olivia, Hayley, Ryan, Charlotte, Yifan, Gabby, Diana, Alex, Kaixin, Alicia, Hui, and Darian, you are so absolutely wonderful and I’m so glad I could be around you and learn from you. Mom, Dad and Nate, you are my anchor. I love you. And, MICA, I’m going to miss you.
Thank you.
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The Search//Shruti Sharma//2016-18
What am I looking for? I lose things a lot; I’ve lost my keys, my wallet, my ID cards so I am very used to people asking me what I’m looking for. And yes, when I’ve lost my keys, my wallet or my ID cards, other people can help. But when I first started school at MICA it felt like I lost myself. I had moved to another country, I was so far away from everything I knew, and I couldn’t seem to fit in. I didn’t know who I was. And I realized that I couldn’t talk to anyone about it.
The only poem I remember from my childhood is Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken.’ The first paragraph of that poem defines my inner conflict. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
The fear of making decisions, the process of trying to figure out who I am as a person and who I am as an artist seemed so separate. I would work on my projects, try to meet my deadlines, try to forget about everything that I was feeling through the day; the projects would end up being unsuccessful and I would then go home and cry.
And the second with the addition of one line, my eventual resolution:
(I walked down that road, for miles and miles and found myself right where I’d started,) Then took the other, as just as fair And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same.
As I look back at my process, I realised that I had two paths I was given, the path that looked good for me and the path that was good for me. And all through my first year I was doing what I thought I should do, making work I thought I should make. I thought the work I made was to be seperate from the person I was. And because who I was was so murky to me, I refused to bring it into my work.
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My need to be the artist I wanted, as well as the person I wanted depended on each other. Who I am feeds what I want people to see. And it took a few detours for those two roads to merge and form the path I was looking for.
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I I feel Lost Lost in myself, Lost in my mind, Lost in my surroundings, I feel Scared Scared of who I am, Scared of where I am, Scared of what I’ve become.
The first time I started combining my experiences into my work was through poem. My self directed Project was a comic called Displaced. Displaced dealt with the experience of coming to America and the process of adapting.
I feel Hurt. Hurt by my feelings Hurt by my emotions Hurt by myself.
It was the first project that I got positive feedback for. I’d never thought I could attempt personal narrative, but for the first time in a long time I wanted to try.
I feel Disconnected Disconnected from the people around me, Disconnected from the ones that once were, Disconnected from the memories I hold. Disconnect, fear, loneliness and hurt, My demons take many forms, They may look harmless but they’re often vicious. Because my demons aren’t the ones that hide in the dark, But the demons that will eat me alive. They grow from my insecurities, And feed on my thoughts and dreams, They devour my hopes, And they push. And push. Until I start to crack. It’s as if I am suddenly glass, waiting to shatter. It is as if I’m a balloon waiting for a prick, Easily deflated, casually thrown. I’m lonely, not just alone I’m uncomfortable where I am. I’m not home. I’m not home.
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Sometimes you need to pour your heart out, into something or to someone. Over the summer, before school started I sat down and I wrote.
And I wrote. And I wrote. I wrote till I started repeating myself. I wasn’t writing for my thesis then. I was writing in a bid to continue the process of catharsis through art. My self directed project had helped me scratch the surface but I needed more. I needed to talk more, I needed to vent more, I needed to rant more. The paper wasn’t a person, the paper didn’t try to help, the paper didn’t offer advice, the paper was safe. It let me expel everything I’d locked within me. It’s like I was the only person in my world. I was isolated. And alone.
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But everyone thinks their problems are unique, including me. I moved to America last year, and I thought with my urban upbringing and exposure to American culture I wouldn’t feel like I was in a country that I didn’t understand. I thought Hollywood movies had prepared me for the realities of this country! I was wrong, about both my level of preparedness and my ability to cope with the lack of it. It took me the better part of the year to realise that: 1. I dealt with my problems better when my misery had company, and
My final project of last year was my most selfish and successful because despite focusing on my own problems, there was a level of universality to how I was feeling. While the specific set of circumstances were unique to me, the emotions were shared. However, while I was making these observations, I was also struggling through the process of coming up with a solution. During this period, I consulted self-help books, but they never seemed to work for me. They handed out easy-to-adopt, feel good ‘solutions’ that when applied to an individual’s unique set of problems wouldn’t be that long lasting.
However, what does help is talking to people, knowing that you’re not alone and feeling supported. And the ability to accept that: 1. Sometimes you don’t find a solution. 2. You are more than your flaws. 3. Yes sometimes what feels big is actually small. 4. There are people out there that understand what you’re going through and care.
2. The more I talked, wrote and drew about it, the better I felt.
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The Search//Shruti Sharma//2016-18
Body Shame
Identity
Body Shame talked about my issues with my body and how they reared their head when I moved here. My problems became aggravated and I started dislking myself, to the point where I couldn’t look at myself anymore.
Identity dealt with my identity and how I saw myself in the new environment I was in. It talked about the conflict that I was struggling with. It was hard to seperate who I wanted to be or thought I was from who people around me saw me as.
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Loneliness
Self Doubt
Loneliness talks about how the people I was surrounded by mattered and the struggle to make friends and create a safe space in a place I was uncomfortable in.
Self Doubt talked about my insecurities in general. Which is why self doubt ended up being absorbed into all the other chapters, for most of my issues came from my inability to believe in myself.
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I deal with my feelings through sharp self-deprecating humor. I draw myself in an almost child like manner. And I never have drawn myself repeatedly for anything. I had to for this book, create characters that were true to the content of the book but I could repeat easily. I had to draw the variety of people around me with their different skin tones because I was surrounded by so many people from so many places and they were integral to the story.
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The colour of my skin, the colour of their skin was integral to my story and to my experience in America.
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Because I grew up in India, drawing brown people was what I did. However, I didn’t have to identify them as brown. We’re all varying shades of brown back home. Which is not to say India is homogenous, of course, but just that, compared to America we’re relatively less diverse.
And so, when I was drawing myself here, I realised I’d never drawn a ‘brown’ person before. And it was hard.
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The Search//Shruti Sharma//2016-18
While trying to decide what I wanted the protragonist to look like (aside from being brown) I was reading Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and what struck me the most about it was his take on realistic vs simplified faces. He talked about how a simple face helped the reader see himself/herself in the character.
And since this book was about the universality of these feelings I decided that I wanted to simplify my character. However, the colour of my skin was important to me. And so I decided that if I had to give her a defining characteristic it had to be her skin. However, for the audience to identify the character in a crowd, she had to have more than just brown skin, for since it was my story there were a fair few people with the same complexion.
And so, the clothes the character wore became her identity. I gave her clothes that I saw myself wearing, that were simple to repeat, without complex patterns that would distract the reader.
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This book follows no specific genre, it isn’t a comic, it isn’t a childrens book. Its what I wanted it to be and how I thought it best to convey the emotions through the story. The book contains single panel, multi panel comics that are anecdotal and are connected by the writing and the children’s like style that is the same in all of them. So while the content of the comics vary, they live harmoniously in the same world, through the consistent character, the accompanying text and the colours and textures that are used.
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Without a contents page and hard divides I had to contemplate ways to make the reader realise the chapter was ending but not have it feel abrupt or disconnected from the rest of the book. I also had to give the book a certain rythym and a string that held it together stylistically. So I decided to create full page spreads that asked the same question as the book, as a way remind the audience of the theme, as well as full page illustrated spreads that would answer that question as well as inform the reader of the topic that the coming chapter dealt with. The repetition of the question/answer opening pages helped add a certain rhythym to the book.
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However, I needed a way to signal the end of each chapter before I signalled the beginning of the new one and so I decided to create spreads that used the ending sentences as large statements that could work as a signal and leave the reader with a positive thought to absorb before they started the new chapter.
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And finally, the book was an object, a piece I could hold, that I had poured everything that I felt into. It was personal yet accessible.
It could be read, if someone wanted to read it. It could be flipped through and be amused at. It could be anything. Anything that the audience wanted it to be. For these experiences were to be talked about, listened to, shared.
I wanted people to look at this book and see themselves in it.
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The Search//Shruti Sharma//2016-18
After ‘What Are You Looking For?’ was created it needed a place to live, an environment that it would exist in for the thesis show.
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What I considered most important once done with my book was to create a space for the book to live in, something that gave the subject matter context.
I’d created a (my)self-help book and I wanted people to be able to pull it out and shelf it in this space filled with other self-help books. And so I created fake, wooden books, because while they promised answers, they didn’t really end up giving the audience any. I also wanted these books to make people laugh, because that’s how I deal with my problems. I laugh them away. And since these books didn’t offer advice I thought they should offer people some form of therapy, and from what I’ve heard laughter is the best kind.
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The Search//Shruti Sharma//2016-18
I then created posters created for the exhibition to echo the theme and to draw the audience into my experience. By saying ‘What Are You Looking For?’ I engaged them into thinking about themselves, but by saying ‘Are You Looking For Me?’ I wanted the audience to draw parallels between what they were looking for and my life experiences and what I was looking for.
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The Search//Shruti Sharma//2016-18
I clung to creating a space that I called my own filled with objects that made sense to me, that depicted the multitude of feelings that I was experiencing and talking about different aspects of my personality.
The one part of my exhibition that I was married to and was a little disparate from the rest of the show were my crumpled paper ceramics. They didn’t necessarily fit within the colours and mood I’d created but I was so attached to them and the anxiety that they possessed, that I had imparted upon them. They were the fragile, colourless, discarded feelings that lived inside me. The feelings that were hidded by the copious amounts of colour and humor that I surrounded myself with.
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This book means so much to me. And to my delight it has connected with and resonated with other people; people that moved from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh; people that moved from a small town to a big city, people that found it hard to make friends, people that struggled with their bodies.
What I wanted from this thesis is to break through the wall I’d created and connect with the people around me. What I wanted was for people to feel a little less alone. And as long as I’ve gotten through to someone, this project feels successful.
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