S P R I N G 2 0 1 7
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Zuhal Feraidon, page 34
CHERISE HOLMES JESSICA SHALVEY
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I Exist, Acknowledge Me A Rising Planet, A Rising Movement
8 CREATIVE COORDINATION MAYA SILVERMAN KIA WASSENAAR LIZZ BANGURA
20 What it Means to be Cultured 22 On Whiteness and Writing 24 The Epiphany: Realizing Your Worth as a Black Woman
28 STUDENT ART ELIZABETH MCCAULEY CHIARA BROWN
36 Elite Ink 40 Cultural Diplomacy
42 THE PORTRAIT DIARY THE STAFF Editors-in-Chief: Sandy Hoang Morgan Toliver Chief Financial Officers: Marwan Elbattouty Lindsay Park Creative Director: Cindy Guo Features Editors: Peter Dailey Michelle Miles
Head Art Curator: Maelisa Singer Fashion Directors: Kat Durham Shubham Patel Lead Photographer: Michelle Miles Public Relations Manager: Georgeanne Pace
Designers: Emeline Callaway Lydia Gregory Sandy Hoang Jasmine Oo Georgeanne Pace Katherine Snyder
Writers: Lizz Bangura Chiara Brown Cherise Holmes Elizabeth McCauley Jessica Shalvey Maya Silverman Kia Wassenaar Student Artists: Zuhal Feraidon Golara Haghtalab Uzo Njoku
A LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
We know -- multiculturalism, globalization, and other words to describe our increasingly interconnected world are not commoditized ideas, nor are they recent trends. In fact, our world has been “interconnected” for centuries (recall the 3000 B.C. spice trade that connected Europe, Asia, and Africa). Yet, over the past few years, we sensed the emergence of new discussions on cultural interconnectedness on grounds and felt an urgency to bring this conversation to this publication. For our Spring 2017 issue, we opened up the forum for UVA students to discuss multiculturalism/globalization/etc. in their own way. With what norms do we define ourselves? Is identification simply a game of comparison? Can we define multiculturalism? Is our discussion of diversity actually inclusive? Within the pages of this issue, our contributors take a look at how their own lives have been shaped in terms of their personal identities and others’ interactions with those identities, the history behind certain cultural products, and issues like racial boundaries. With today’s political environment and as a new generation grows and begins, we encourage you, as our reader, to interact with our content, draw your own conclusions, and create your own story. It is with great sadness that we say we will be graduating and no longer serving as the editors-in-chief of V Magazine next year. With great confidence, we pass this rewarding job to Cindy Guo and Michelle Miles, who we believe have the passion and creativity it takes to carry the magazine forward. We can’t wait to see where our magazine flourishes from here.
Co-Editor-in-Chief Sandy Hoang
Co-Editor-in-Chief Morgan Toliver
I Exist,
ACknowledge Me s
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I was sitting towards the middle of the room, deliberately situated at the end of the row by the door. My pencil balanced between my fingers, hovering by my notebook, but my hand sat still as I soaked in what was happening around me. I had come to my lecture of predominantly white students, my lecture that was taught by a white professor, and found myself listening to a lesson that was essentially by a white person for white people about black people. My eyes made their rounds from the professor, to the clock, to the door quite frequently that day. Allow me to explain. I had taken an introduction to media studies class. I had initially been considering a minor in media studies, but after walking into class the first day and finding myself in a sea of sorority girls and fraternity boys, I reconsidered. (White) Greek life has always made me a bit uncomfortable due to their blatantly racist pasts and current façade of diversity. As a result, I kept to myself in that class; I felt out of place, so I made myself small and unobtrusive. This was simply the first strike though. The class got much worse. Halfway through the semester, I decided I hated the class. My professor had given a lecture on black representation in the media that day and I decided I had no other choice but to hate the class. I was intrigued at the beginning of the lecture. This was a topic worth talking about. This was an important topic that needed to be talked about. After a semester full of references to white bands and “iconic moments” that were only relevant to the white population, here was a lecture that I could finally connect to. I was hopeful that day; I really wanted it to be good.
language used in them and how they were perceived by white audiences. However, it was obvious he was not equipped to deliver this lecture due to his overuse of the term “African American”, his subtle effort to show he was not racist through overdone reactions, completely missing some of the other racist things about the shows we viewed, and never discussing the persisting issues of representation in present-day media. All of these mistakes combined made him seem absolutely careless. The whole lecture felt like an extremely shallow lesson about racist shows from the past and how they’re all gone now – hooray! Needless to say, I was livid. The most frustrating thing about the whole situation was not that my professor made mistakes in his presentation, but that he pretended to be an expert in the subject when clearly he was not. I, among the handful of other black students in the room, were forced to listen to his problematic lecture as he avoided our gazes and confidently taught inaccurate information. If he would have simply acknowledged that he wasn’t an expert, accepted that he probably was not the best person to present on the subject, and opened the floor up for discussion from people of color, that whole lecture would have gone much smoother. I have been stuck in similar situations a countless number of times – situations where my identity is overlooked, misrepresented, or erased altogether. I am tired of hearing lessons about identities and cultures from people who neither identify with them nor know anything about them. My personhood sits at the intersection of several marginalized identities, identities that I am proud to call mine, but society has made it difficult to exist within them comfortably. Frankly, I am exhausted The lecture had flaws, was mildly offensive, from constantly having to remind people that my identity and left me feeling completely invisible. exists, deserves recognition, and needs to be accurately represented. My professor’s lecture could have gone much I had low expectations for the lecture, but I better if he had truly considered the accuracy of his was in complete disbelief with how it went by the end knowledge, how he would present on the subject, and of it. As a black woman, at no point in time did I feel to whom he would be presenting. To put it simply, my like the lecture even took into consideration that black professor should have taken a more politically correct students existed in that classroom. I’m not saying my approach. While the term “political correctness” has professor malevolently designed a lesson that was only recently gained a bad reputation, I stand by it as a to be consumed by his white students; it was just very positive asset to society; its pro-inclusivity message is clear that he had interpreted black information from a important. Professors should be striving to use politically white perspective. Subsequently, the lecture was taught correct language and double check that they are actuthrough a very white lens, which largely only appealed ally achieving this goal. We live in a beautifully diverse to white students. The lecture had flaws, was mildly offen- society, so professors should do everything in their power sive at times, and left me feeling completely invisible. to make all their students feel like they are a part of My professor played examples of older TV the university community. Marginalized groups should shows that were centered around black families, such not have to choose between conformity and exile. So, as Good Times and The Cosby Show. He pointed out a acknowledge that we exist and adjust accordingly. few of the racist things about the shows, describing the Photo source: http://www.onyxtruth.com/
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A Rising Planet, A Rising Movement On Christmas Eve of 1968, William Anders took the famous “Earthrise” photograph aboard the Apollo 8 spacecraft. Anders became one of the first three people, along with the two other astronauts on the mission, to ever witness our planet in its entirety, rising above the surface of the moon much as the sun would from a viewpoint on Earth. The photograph, which captured Earth as fragile, beautiful, and in need of absolute protection, became monumental in its global influence and proceeded to initiate the environmental movement of the 1970s. A little under fifty years later, a lot has shifted on our planet. A changing climate, largely attributed to human actions and neglect, has already severely altered the stability of Earth, highlighting the fragility that the Apollo 8 crew captured half a century earlier.
The growing issue of climate change - the first large-scale problem in history that is fully global in scope and entirely disinterested in human endeavors 6
Jessica Shalvey
has emerged more profoundly than ever as a source of destruction that requires worldwide attention and resolution. However, even amidst strong concern for our planet’s future, there has been a heartening and reassuring prospect. To take on an issue of global scale, a global community has emerged; one which views culture not as a barrier, but as a tool. Cultural and artistic movements have surfaced across hundreds of countries to express concern and promote widespread change. What is so powerful about these creative mobilizations is that they form a universal sentiment—they are strong in that they are diverse; they are mighty in that they are the sum of individual perspectives. Environmental protection is a difficult undertaking, but its challenges have sparked artistic outpourings the world over, from Africa to China to Australia—crossing continents and oceans indifferently in order to spread awareness.
Photography, from the era of the Earthrise photograph through today, has emerged as one of the greatest artistic tools in shaping this global environmentalist sentiment. Photography, from the era of the Earthrise photograph through today, has emerged as one of the greatest artistic tools in shaping this global environmentalist sentiment. Requiring no specific language to be understood, the medium holds the power of multicultural understanding and truth. Bill McKibben, founder of environmental nonprofit 350 and one of the millions inspired by Earthrise, understands the state of our world today and the need that we currently have within it. He thus first created the concept of “Eaarth,” or the notion that our planet has shifted so severely since the taking of that original 1968 photograph that it can no longer be called by the same name. In a way, he argues, we’ve created a new, fundamentally different planet. However, to restore the old and unite it with the new, McKibben suggests another name to move forward: “eARTh.” The 350 campaign began as a grassroots movement intended to merge public art and photography with environmental awareness, and eventually spread across 188 countries, requiring time and effort from thousands of local contributors. Taken aerially, the photos of the campaign work to highlight fragility and beauty once more, but this time incorporate a new element: people. Local residents in different communities created human sculptures large enough to be viewed from space and photographed by satellites. Each told a local cultural story that merged into a larger global need, uniting people based on differences and a common goal. In New Delhi, India, close to three thousand school children stood in the grass and formed the image of an elephant to show the people who hold power in their country that they cannot avoid the “elephant in the room,” that is, climate change.
The elephant, a symbol of Indian heritage and culture, is valued very highly and in need of protection. What’s more, in the Dominican Republic, hundreds gathered right on the coast, forming an image of a house at risk of being submerged by rising ocean levels, a problem that many regions in the Caribbean are already facing. In New Mexico, over 1,500 people flooded into the dried Santa Fe riverbed with blue-painted cardboard and sheets, illustrating hopes for a revival of the sustainable river that could once be found there. Closer to home, in New York City, volunteers painted a mural on a rooftop to demonstrate the state’s potential coastline if rising sea levels continue as they have in the past few years, which would threaten hundreds of homes and families. On a smaller scale within our own Charlottesville community, through access to images like these of other cultural regions, we can see some of the ways in which the global has conditioned the local. Art, especially photography, has a knack for making its way to our little city, both from across the Atlantic and from other areas of our own country. With this, we see the power of a photograph: it can be translated to cities in far flung regions of the world while still maintaining its universality. The culture surrounding climate protection is critical because every area that it reaches is connected to the bigger picture; there is nowhere on Earth that is unaffected. The realities of climate change call for global responses, utilizing everything from photography to music to film to sculpture to poetry. We recognize a common sentiment of hope in these cultural crossovers, sparked by universal caring and desire for change. Reintroducing the emotions and actions that first surrounded “Earthrise” fifty years ago, we are re-emerging today into another environmental movement. Stemming from a returning recognition of our planet’s fragility, people of all nations are turning to individualized methods of artistic response, and in so doing, have created a collective movement of universal beauty that is absolutely unique in both scope and scale.
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CREATIVE COO
A Photoessay on U
MODELS: BRITTANY CROW RACHEL GOOD ALEXIS ARTIS SEAN LEI EFFIE SMITH VERONICA ZENA SULLIVAN ALEJANDRO NAVA MONCADA ANDY FANG ANDREW LIANG SHIVANGI MISTRY AMRITA SHANKAR SUPRAJA CHITTARI JESSE ROSS ACACIA DAI SARAH CHU ANDREW ZAZZERA ZOE TRAN JENNIFER VO THU TRAN CHRISTOPHER LIU JULIANNA LEE
ORDINATION
UVA’s Dance Culture
FASHION DIRECTORS: SHUBHAM PATEL AND KATHERINE DURHAM
HEAD PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHELLE MILES
ASSISTANT PHOTOGRAPHER: WILL JONES
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER: GEORGEANNE PACE
CONCEPTUALIZED BY: CLAIRE POUMEROL
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what it means to be
“cultured”
n a m r e v il Maya S
I suppose I don’t understand what it means to be “cultured.” I grew up in one of the world’s greatest melting pots. Renown for protests and hippies, my education as a youth in San Francisco taught me about diversity. So, when I became a teenager, and heard the term “cultured” thrown around my school, I was confused as to what being “cultured” meant. I soon learned that it meant ascertaining a particular degree of knowledge when it comes to other people’s traditions and their significance. As polemical as it might be, I’ve realized that the idea of being cultured is only valid if someone truly is. So, what defines true multiculturalism? Is it race-based? Is it exposure to diversity? In my personal experience, when someone goes out of their way to emphasize their multiculturalism, it is typically because they are seeking it out and it is not innate. This quest for integration is not inherently problematic, but becomes so when an individual decides to call themselves “cultured”, without any actual knowledge, appreciation or application of said culture. So, use of the term “cultured” only becomes an issue when people are erroneously applying it to themselves.
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I acknowledge that I was fortunate to be immersed in a diverse community from a young age, and have progressive values that maintain that degree of diversity in my life. However, at UVa, there so many opportunities to engage in education and awareness of issues facing minority groups. Exposure to these groups and differing values helps cement authentic culturalism. We cannot say that we are “cultured” just through awareness of a commodification of someone’s background.
Wearing certain fashion trends is never enough. It has become popular for people to tout experiences with cultures other their own. For example, wearing baggy pants with elephants on them and practicing yoga since East Asian cultures have become “cool.” For this reason, I can’t help but think: should we be encouraging multiculturalism? I have often thought about the boundary between appropriation and multiculturalism – and it is a thin one. To me, this fine line mimics the one between empathy and sympathy. Empathy and appropriation are similar in that they both attempt to place an individual into somebody else’s shoes. Even though, that person will never truly be able to experience life as if they were the appropriated person. On the other hand, sympathy is much more empowering – it is the acknowledgment that one can never truly understand the experiences of another individual while also acting consciously. For example, on a sign at one of the Claremont Colleges in Southern California, graffiti was found stating “white girl take off your hoops.” This was particularly powerful because the comment uses hoops as an allegory for larger, heavier issues of race, cultural appropriation, and gentrification. This analogy applies rather fluidly to other objects of appropriation as well – whether it be hamsa necklaces, dream-catchers or hoop earrings. These little objects serve as symbolisms for unique and special traditions belonging to particular traditions. Therefore, to apply these items to people of other backgrounds, is to confiscate and de-legitimize the histories of these peoples and the importance of particular traditions within their cultures.
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On Whiteness and Writing Kia Wassenaar I’m a white female who grew up in suburban Virginia, surrounded by people who looked like me.
The characters in the books I read growing up, the actors in the movies I watched, and most of the people in my life, were, with very few exceptions, white. It’s an odd thing to try to judge the amount of prejudice you were raised with, but it’s safe to assume that you were raised with some, and like most people, I became more aware of the inherent biases of my upbringing as I got older. Through exposure to a wider array of perspectives, specifically by way of literature which told the stories of people whose lives were vastly different from my own, my view of the world changed, largely for the better. The importance of the arts in helping us better understand the world we live in can’t be overstated, but these days, exploring outside one’s own perspective, especially in an artistic sense, often involves walking a fine line. In January, UVA hosted the Pulitzer Prize winning writer, Junot Diaz, who gave a speech called, “First You Must Rebel, or; How I Stopped Writing White and Got Free.” Diaz is a Dominican American whose family immigrated to New Jersey when he was six, and whose writing often centers around the immigrant experience. He spoke about his experiences teaching young minority writers as a professor at MIT and about the difficulty of writing as a person of color who has been raised in a mostly white media environment. He emphasized that writing your truth, whatever it may be, is more important, and often more difficult, than writing the story society is telling you to write, and in this way, his message was universal.
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His speech was powerful for all these reasons, but for me, it was also powerful because it made me uncomfortable. Although his intended audience was minority students, Diaz ended up speaking about how “hegemonic whiteness has silenced those of color” to a room that was mostly full of white people. Having my privilege called out forced me to raise questions about my own writing that I might not have otherwise asked; questions like: How should race factor into the decisions I make as a writer? Should I be trying to make my work more inclusive, and if yes, how do I do that effectively? If the subject of my writing isn’t race, how much should I really worry about it?
I realize that even asking these questions redirects the conversation away from the underlying racial problems and onto my own struggle. There are significantly more pressing issues and there are people who are far more equipped to address them, however, these questions about whiteness and writing are still worthy of being explored, if only as one step towards writing with more compassion and awareness. The recent success of the movie La La Land brought this conversation to the forefront. The film is part musical, part romance, part iridescent nostalgia for the 50’s, and earned 14 nominations at the 89th Academy Awards ceremony. According to NPR, La La Land was supposed to be a film “even musical skeptics would love,” and many would argue that in this sense, it succeeded. However, as many have pointed out, it seems wrong that a movie focusing so heavily on jazz is so lacking in diversity. An article published in Paste Magazine titled, “The Unbearable Whiteness of La La Land” argues that the film “functions as an ode to a lost era of white supremacy, and its viewers, consciously or unconsciously, participate in the delusion.” This is a strong interpretation of the film, but certainly brings to light the racial implications that can’t be ignored. For some viewers, the whiteness of the film was clearly not an issue, but to another large portion of viewers, the lack of diversity made the film inauthentic or offensive, and ultimately detracted from the artistic value of a film that was supposed to accessible to everyone. Writing your truth, whatever it may be, is more important, and often more difFicult than writing the story society is telling you to write. White writers like Kathryn Stockett, who wrote The Help, or Pulitzer Prize winning author, Michael Chabon, have attempted to write from the perspectives of black characters and have received both praise and criticism for doing so. In Telegraph Avenue, Chabon writes partly from the perspective of an African American man who co-owns a record store with his white friend in North Oakland, California. Although it was widely praised for the beauty of its prose, many also criticized it for a sometimes dated and stereotypical portrayal of a historically black neighborhood. The book has often been pegged as another example of “White Person Tackles Race,” but should his novel be viewed as a valid attempt to cross racial boundaries, or would Chabon have been better off not having tried at all? Lena Dunham, the creator of the popular HBO series, Girls, has acknowledged her decision not to include any women of color in the show because she didn’t feel she could accurately speak to their experience. The show addressed the criticism of whitewashing by bringing in the well-known actor, Donald Glover, to play the main character’s new boyfriend, and featured a surprisingly honest scene in which the two characters address the role of race in the relationship. But other than that, Dunham’s feelings about writing outside her perspective have stuck, and the show hasn’t tackled the issue again. The possibility and fear of writing a racially over simplified or stereotyped character is undoubtedly something to be conscious of, but should it come at the expense of representing a more diverse set of perspectives? A recent article in The Atlantic summed the problem well: “If white artists don’t portray characters of color, they’re whitewashing; if they do, they’re appropriating or misrepresenting. That both criticisms are valid makes it even harder to imagine a way forward.” It would be nice if the answer to all this were something as simple as “write your truth,” but I’m not sure that it is. My truth is that until I got to UVA, every one of my close friends was white, and even now, my circle of friends is still relatively white. I see the problem with writing only white characters or only from a white perspective, but I also don’t feel I have any right to claim I know what it’s like to live in someone else’s skin. Ultimately, it isn’t going to be a white writer who best represents the perspective of a person of color. It will be the writer who has lived it, and for this reason we should all hope that minority writers receive the same kind of attention and platform that white writers have historically been afforded. In the meantime, producing work that acknowledges the complexities of race, that demonstrates humility, and that shows a willingness to empathize with perspectives outside our own is perhaps one small step towards an answer.
Source: Daniel Stewart Photography
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The Epiphany: Realizing Your Worth as a Black Woman Lizz Bangura
I didn’t realize how beautiful I truly was. I didn’t appreciate my nose or my curves. I didn’t appreciate the color of my skin – and don’t even get me started on my hair. I hated my hair. It wasn’t smooth or silky or easy to manage and I hated all the attention it got just because it was different. Because it wasn’t that the type of hair advertised in your everyday Pantene or Garnier Fructis commercial. It was different. I was different. And to me, for a very long time, that prevented me from realizing how beautiful I was. Most of the images I saw on TV growing up looked nothing like me. What I saw were princesses with glowing olive tone skin and thin bodies. They had rose red lips and soft brown or blond hair. I didn’t see any curvy, brown skinned, kinky haired models to give me any relief. I didn’t see anything that looked like - me. I didn’t see anything close to the sort. Therefore, I didn’t realize how beautiful I truly was. But just because I was different - because my hair was kinkier and my nose was wider and especially just because my skin was darker - I didn’t know that I would be considered less beautiful compared to those with lighter complexions than me. It’s an insane concept to grasp. As a black woman, you know you’re underappreciated. You see that spelt out to you from day one based on the lack
of representation in all media outlets (i.e. magazines, TV, movies) - but you don’t know why. Or at least I didn’t. Today, I know that it’s simply because we’re not wanted - or in kinder words - not preferred. Media, in most ways, is a re-presentation of society, expect the society that it wishes to reflect back does not include us. It does not care to include who are, for all that we are, authentically. That means without the maid outfits, without the busted accents, without the babies and baby daddies. Rarely, we are casted as the respectable, working mothers or even the female heroine in your favorite coming of age movie. As a black woman, it is not screamed to you that you are beautiful as loudly as it is for others of different ethnic backgrounds. You are not shown your worth. Often, you’re seen as the loud best friend with cool, expensive shoes. You are seen as angry and unreasonable – “crazy”. You are told that assimilation is key and there is a never-ending pressure to act and look right… but not too “white.” And yes, we have exceptions. We have the hazel eyed Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell and the gorgeous caramel toned Halle Berry, but if this was ten years ago, how more likely is it that we’ll see them on the cover of a magazine compared to someone who looked like Lupita Nyong’o who doesn’t bare of those features? How more likely that we would have seen any of these women on a cover compare to Cindy Crawford? When you grow up on this type of society, a society that praises the fact the more Eurocentric
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you look, the more beautiful you are, you lose sight of yourself. When I was younger, I was given dolls with white skin and small bodies. That’s all we were supplied with; therefore, that’s all I drew. Looking back, the drawings I made as a simple-minded kindergartener did not include the brown crayon. I used the “peach” color, and I distinctly remember everyone else calling it “skin color.” Now, this did not mean that as a youth I believed I was white, but I used that crayon because it was normal. I wasn’t “normal” apparently, but I drew what was “normal.” And honestly, I didn’t know any other way. I didn’t know I, with my brown crayon colored skin with my cornrows and chubby waist, could be normal too. I didn’t know because that’s not what we’re taught. And it took me a really long time to learn that. To get to that point when we discover that, yes, we are different, but what does that mean? Does that mean we are less beautiful? Does that mean we hold less value in the world? Does that mean we are not wanted, preferred, cared to be represented? With the way the world is going, there’s always a voice inside your head that will want to tell you yes. But that’s simply not true. It’s not. And there’s no single moment for me when it happened. I didn’t just wake up one day and look in the mirror and suddenly notice that the color of my skin actually had color. I didn’t burst up from bed one day after a dream and scream “I’m black and I’m am proud and I love my hair!” No. It’s not that black and white. It’s a journey. It’s a journey I still struggle with today - just like any person struggling to find the value and worth within themselves based all they have inside and out. The only difference is that my journey, in my opinion, is a lot harder that a lot of other races. We don’t have tons of TV shows or movies, or even books to relate to. Where I grew up, I didn’t have teachers who looked like me to gain confidence from. And, believe it or not, those things matter. Seeing someone who looks like you, doing well in the world, matters. At least when you’re a child. Therefore, my epiphany toward realizing my worth as a black woman was delayed. I didn’t realize my beauty as a black woman until I was in high school. Until I was old enough to realize was cultural appropriation is and discovered the idea that black features are more desirable when they are not seen on a black woman. It’s not the fact that boobs and big hips are not seen as attractive, it’s the fact that the color of our skin serves as a
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barrier to realizing so – as if we have inherent traits that come with our skin that that disqualify us from being desirable. As I grew up in a predominately white neighborhood, I never understood why all the thin, white girls had boyfriends, but I was never shown the same type of interest. I never understood why men who share the same race as me treated me the same way as the white boys. Black women are the only women who have to worry if men of their own race will go for them. Because to these black men, white women are better. They are beautiful; they are more valuable, and to have a black woman on your arm simply doesn’t mean as much. I know now that I am beautiful. But it took some searching. It took friendships and long discussions with people who I could relate to. It took helping each other out and showing each other the beauty we could not see in ourselves because the world refuse to show us on its own. You do not wake up one day and suddenly love your melanin skin, it is a journey, but once you do - once you get to the point where you are no longer bothered by the way your brown skin glows and or how your hair bounces with curls. When you no longer reject your differences, but let them empower you - you feel relief. You feel euphoria. And with no help from the white community. But even amongst my own African-Americans, I am told I am aided by my lighter complexion. Because I stray from the “detrimental dark, black skin.” That is what I was told growing up. That is what my sister who is several shades darker than me was compared to. “You were left under to light too long,” we joked and laughed. Because back then we failed to see the pride that comes from dark skin of any shade. The pride of knowing that, despite the fact we have everything in the world going against us, we are still here. That though we lack proper representation and are objectified, we are succeeding. Our skin glows with melanin yet we have families and jobs and respect. We speak how we want to speak and we act how we choose to act and our hair is the way we seek it to be. It is not a symbol of conformity nor divergence. It’s simply beautiful in all its shapes and forms. And it’s most definitely, not there for you to touch.
Source: Daniel Stewart Photography
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STUDEN curated by Maelisa Singer
NT ART
Uzo Njoku Second year | Studio Art
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Uzo’s current works explore the current landscape of contemporary figurative and nude paintings, particularly women of color, due to the salient topics and issues of the 21st century -- from race, gender to privacy, social media, and love. “We are living in a time that’s ripe with debate over what it means to be either a female or a woman of color.” She uses her works to empower women of color by giving them uncommon poses and intriguing facial expressions. Each figurative painting speaks to the present, and offers glimpses into the future.
Top: Green Woman Bottom: Flowers Opposite: Perks of Being Woman Previous page: Beloved Garden
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Both artworks were featured in The Bridge’s “Empowering Women of Color” showcase. Left: Yellow Right: Blue
Golara Haghtalab
Fifth year | Chemistry and Studio Art, painting concentration
My pieces display figures and culture inspired by different tribal women, african women, and multiracial women. For each of these pieces I was inspired by my sister’s simple drawings of tribal women. She is a photographer and also a UVa student. These pieces are improvisational sites in which the constructed line and the interaction between such lines are used to question the way human figure is pictured. Visual and actual drawn lines are also used to tell the story and thought process of each
women. Basically, I have tried to compose a universe for a woman’s mind by using cultural, emotional, psychological, and intellectual references. I wanted to invite the viewer to move into a world of assumption or to stand back and observe the interactions between such spaces and cultural refrences. I intended to create a network of information by using lines, shapes, and human figures to explain my point and also to invite the viewer forward to inspection.
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Zuhal Feraidon Fifth year | Studio Art, painting concentration
Hide and Seek I - VI
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The “Hide and Seek” gouache painting series consists of paintings containing hidden ink transfers of figures of young women taken from photographs captured in August 2015, in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan. These ink transfers are incorporated into painted Islamic art patterns from various mosques in the Balkh province of Afghanistan. The ink transfer technique in combination with gouache painting allows for the direct integration of the images of the girls into Islamic art patterns. These patterns also have hidden scriptures of “God” and “Prophet Mohammad” in Arabic. The harmonic appearance of these girls within patterns from Islamic art illustrates that women are created by God and therefore are sacred.
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ELITE INK A History of Tattoos as status symbols Source: livescience.com
Neck Tatoos of the Deir-El-Bahari Nobility
In 1891, a team of French archaeologists in eastern Egypt uncovered several female mummies whose abdomens, thighs and breasts were tattooed with dots and geometric designs. Though the remains were discovered in a burial site reserved for royals and nobility called Deir el-Bahari, the Egyptologists dismissed the discovery, indicating in their writings that the excavated women were of “dubious status,� most likely prostitutes. Later, translations of funerary inscriptions revealed that the women were not actually concubines buried alongside their royal keepers, but instead high-status priestesses. 36
Source: archaeology.com
These archaeologists’ misjudgements were based on Victorian-era assumptions that tattoos belonged only to sexual deviants and those of very low social status. Yet just a few millennia earlier, tattoos bore no such associations. There is plentiful archaeological evidence that tattoos in numerous ancient cultures, including the Ancient Britons and pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas, were symbols of high status. Herodotus even wrote that in Scythian culture, not having tattoos was “a testimony of low birth.” The social phenomenon of tattooing seems to have sprung up independently among ancient cultural groups on every populated continent, and surviving artifacts and human remains indicate that whether its purpose was religious, therapeutic, or artistic, it was often reserved for religious leaders and the social elite.
Tattooing seems to have sprung up independently among ancient cultural groups on every populated continent.
3,000 year old tatoo found in Tarmin Basin, China
At some point, the connotations of body artwork took a turn for the worse. Just as tattooing began as a prestigious art form and honorable rite of passage in many different places, tattoos eventually became associated with criminality and low-status in much of the world. This shift is illustrated clearly through the mummified remains found in the Tarim Basin of China. Well preserved due to the region’s dry climate, mummies in this region from circa 1200 B.C. provide evidence that tattooing was a widespread practice among various social groups. By circa 200 B.C., however, tattoos were only found on remains in criminals’ graves.
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This transformation did not follow the exact same timeline in every culture, but shifting perceptions of tattoos were often catalyzed by the comingling of different cultures. Tattoos in Ancient Greece and Rome were most commonly used to mark ownership of slaves, but as the Roman empire expanded, Roman soldiers encountered tattooed warriors of different nations and followed suit, bringing tattoos with new meaning and context back to Rome. However, tattoos were later banned for religious reasons during the rule of the Christian Roman Emperor Constantine, following GeoSans Light the biblical belief that tattooshttp://www.dafont.com/geo-sans-light.font mutilate bodies made in the image of God. Ultimately, Christianity not only prohibited tattoos among its practitioners but also supplanted religions which incorporated tattooing as a sacred practice.
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Despite Christian attitudes towards tattooing, there was a brief period in which tattooing was popular among the British upper class. A young royal named Prince Bertie got several tattoos in 1862, igniting a 20-year period in which tattoos spread throughout the royal houses of Europe. Because skillful & Limousines European tattoo artists wereChampagne hard to come http://www.dafont.com/champagne-limby, tattoos were exclusively ousines.font found among those with significant wealth.Dolce It is Vita possible this http://www.dafont.com/dolce-vita.font aristocratic trend was inspired by accounts of Polynesian tattooing following James Cook’s Aku & Kamu http://www.dafont.com/aku-kamu.font expedition to the area, though this correlation is a point of contention among tattoo scholars. Regardless of the source of inspiration, tattooing briefly marked high status in a region which has historically been its greatest detractor.
But if the spread of Christianity from Europe was the first disruption to tattooing around the world, mechanization was the second. Tattooed royals who relished the exclusivity of their ink were probably not thrilled when the invention of the electric tattoo gun in 1891 made tattoos much more affordable and subsequently accessible to lower classes. This democratization of tattooing effectively ended the royal tattooing craze, indicating that inaccessibility itself was the most alluring aspect of tattooing to these upper-class individuals. Tattoos gradually came to signify criminality for much of the modern era. It was not until the 1970s that tattoos became mainstream again for people in the West who were not soldiers, sailors, or prisoners. However, some cultures resisted these shifting tides: Samoans have maintained their tattooing tradition with meticulous attention to detail, using largely the same style and implements today that their ancestors used over 2,000 years ago. Nearby, the MÄ ori people of New Zealand resisted Christian missionaries’ efforts to end their tradition of tattooing and continued using elaborate facial tattooing as late as the 1970s to mark high social standing in their culture.
In some cases, expanding forces admired the artwork they saw and brought it back to their homelands on their own bodies.
Sailors bringing back tatoos from deployment
Ultimately, the expansion and integration of different cultures as a result of imperialism has been the primary driver of evolving attitudes towards tattoos. In some cases, expanding forces admired the artwork they saw and brought it back to their homelands on their own bodies. More often than not, however, colonizers attempted to impose their negative views of tattoos onto other populations. Because Europe was often a bastion of anti-tattoo sentiment, the colonization of other continents by Europeans had a primarily detrimental effect on the status of tattoo-bearers. The common thread throughout history is that tattoos have served as symbols of larger cross-cultural patterns of influence, whether emblematic of integration, appropriation or oppression.
Written By Elizabeth McCauley
Cultural Diplomacy
American Media As Our Greatest Public Relations Asset Abroad
Chiara Brown
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A recent poll1 showed that the most popular American television show in Sweden is Mr. Robot, in Argentina its The Simpsons, and in Romania its CSI: New York_. At any given moment, all over the world, people are consuming American media. It is arguably one of our most lucrative and popular exports, and abroad, it is everywhere. This past semester I was lucky enough to spend some time traveling. While my friends and I made our way though Asia with backpacks in tow, I was overwhelmed with excitement at the prospect of finding myself in a totally foreign place. I bought guidebooks with important phrases in various languages to help me navigate the language barrier, I prepared myself for new and exotic cuisines, and I relished in the images of faraway and foreign cities on google. Admittedly, I was also excited to get away from America for other reasons. After November’s election I found myself trapped somewhere in between a feeling of total disbelief and obstinacy. I was ready to experience another part of the world, eager for some distance from the enormous weight of disappointment and fear I had been feeling. All of the sudden, I found myself miles away from home in a place which in some ways felt deeply foreign, although to my surprise felt familiar in other ways. Of course my trip gave me a unique understanding of other cultures, as travel often does, but even more than that it gave me better understanding of my own culture. The farther away I found myself from home, the more I felt I was able to get perspective on what America really means on a global scale. One of the things which most provided this perspective was the omnipresence of western culture. Almost everyone I encountered spoken English. Almost everyone was accommodating simply because of our status as Westerners. Almost all the food was catered to Westerners; every menu was equipped with two separate sections, one with traditional and local fare, and the other with burgers, hot dogs, pasta, and the like. Yet most most interesting to me was the fact that everywhere we went, American media dominated. We felt ubiquitous traces of our popular culture in every country; American television shows being advertised on billboards, American music playing on the radio, American films in translation at the movie theaters. I regularly heard the local friends we made along the way discuss the same media I was consuming at home as if it was their own. These conversations continually confirmed my own assumptions about the influence of American media on a global stage. on the one hand, there seemed to be a sense of appreciation for our creative exports, while on the other a deep sense of confusion and dismay about the future of America and its relationship to the global community on a political scale. Meanwhile headlines about Trump’s first 100 days circulated throughout our trip, and we also often found ourselves acting as pseudo-ambassadors for The States, responding regularly to questions about our country’s future from the same friends. It felt an odd paring: on the one hand, there seemed to be a sense of appreciation for our creative exports, while on the other a deep sense of confusion and dismay about the future of America and its relationship to the global community on a political scale. The awareness of these two aspects of my own culture was critical for me, because—for the first time—I realized just how much what America does can matter on an international scale. Our policies, and even our media, play a role in shaping perceptions and receptions of our nation abroad, yet the two somehow seem to have remained mutually exclusive. Despite the fact that important decisions about our role on the global stage continued to unravel in Washington, American media had seemingly maintained a beloved and influential position in the countries we visited. Rather than associating us with, say, the xenophobia being espoused by the incumbent Trump Administration, the people we met associated us (at least for the time being) with the shows, songs and movies that they loved. Culturally at least, people still saw America as the leader we had all feared was long out of favor. I would be remiss if I didn’t note that the legacies of imperialism are largely responsible for the presence of American media in the countries I visited, but these aspects of our culture have now found a deeply rooted place in the global media’s identity. This left me thinking about art and culture—two things which already play an influential role in perceptions of America abroad—and how they might have the capacity to act as a US public relations saving grace if we can continue to keep them separate and in conversation with our shifting political views. If the last few months have taught us anything it’s that the people have power. We can find a voice through art, and use that voice to act as an ally to those abroad feeling alienated from leadership which preaches a dangerous isolationism. History reminds us time and time again that the value of art in influencing positive social progress is not to be underestimated. As we continue to try and tackle global issues such as the refugee crisis, global warming, equal rights and so much more, I at least, find myself turning to back to art. It seems to me to be the best lead we’ve got towards navigating this uncertain future.
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http://www.refinery29.com/2015/12/98924/popular-american-tv-shows-worldwide
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Diary Portrait
Models: Emily Sun Anjali Kapil Nohemi Almaguer Pooja Ranganathan Naira Feraidon Aaron Aguhob Jenny Lee Michaela Moses Hojung Lee Ambica Chopra Kevin Han Jerome Tirso
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