Blog post 1
The concept of Representation has been a circulating theme in the media, that many are still pushing and fighting for, in order to break the cycle of false ideas and divide between people. The ‘Lack of ‘ and misrepresentation in the past, is something that has affected many of our subconscious perceptions regarding race within society today, and is something that is progressing over time but is still slow to fully change.
As a person of mixed Russian/ Carribean heritage, growing up in Russia ( a predominantly white country) has definitely affected my perceptions of beauty, as I was not exposed to seeing almost any women in the media who looked like me. It has taken years of confusion, self hatred, exploration and education for me to accept myself as a person of colour, and even so mainly because of the increase in representation that I witnessed during my later teenage years. Being personally affected by the increase in representation of people of colour made me realise the importance of it and is something that I am very passionate about and will explore more in future work, as I believe there is still much that hasn’t been explored.
In Teleica Kirkland’s lecture on representation, she spoke a lot about how “Black entertainment and culture’’ has become a trend, which despite what one many think would be something completely positive, it can become a negative, due to the misrepresentation and misunderstanding of black culture. She linked this to the emerging topic of conversation that is Cultural appropriation, and how “ It’s about power and privilege”, as some take ideas, with no acknowledgement or engagement with the cultures they are taking ideas from, and claim it as their own. This is a topic that I myself have delved into in previous work, addressing “ Blackfishing”, where a person of european descent presents themselves as being black. However, rather than focusing on the negatives of the continuation of culture appropriation, Kirkland turned the attention towards Cultural Appreciation and how brands and designers can still take influence from other cultures if they do the right research and acknowledge the culture they are taking influence from. She gave a great example of this, Wafrica, which is a collaboration between an African designer and Japanese culture which created a series of work that is collaborative and has been created through an immense amount of research and immersion into the culture.
I was particularly intrigued when Teleica highlighted how representation is different from inclusion and that even though we are seeing a lot more representation of POC on the outside, there is still a great lack of inclusion in work behind the scenes, which also affects the authenticity of the narratives that brands try to embody. Thus when thinking about how to create ‘better lives’ when we consider representation, I believe that the focus on inclusion behind the scenes is primary, as through that there will be a lot more accurate representation in the media and a lot less misrepresentation or room for cultural appropriation. After this lecture, I was inspired to collaborate with more people of colour when producing my work and not only using them as my subject matter and think it will make my work even more authentic and interesting in the future.