How important are aspects of your identity to your practice?

Mya: I wouldn’t say my hispanic identity is a *main* theme in my work, but an underlying theme in everything that I create. The aesthetics I enjoy and the way I view the world were completely influenced by me growing up as a hispanic woman, and therefore it makes its way into all my work, just subtly.

Jeah: As I’ve expressed earlier, my culture has been only a small contributor to my art practice. Despite that however, I wish to stay as true as possible to who I am as a person within my art and decision making in my art practice. It’s incredibly important for me and, in my belief, should be important to every artist that your identity should be the biggest contributor to your art practice. Even though I’ve made very little pieces about my culture, I’ve made a promise that it would be something that I explore after school. Throughout my time in VCU, I’ve refused to make anything that I wasn’t passionate about and pushed to stay true to my beliefs and values when making art for classes. Identity isn’t something that you should push aside and should always be important to implement in any work or piece that you create.

Maria: For a while I actively avoided including any aspects of myself, like my culture, in my works. It felt like as soon as my professors knew it was “cultural”, every aspect of the piece became something to try and decode. Even though the stories I was telling were connected to my heritage, they are still just stories of love, grief, and resilience. I don’t shy away from highlighting my identity anymore, I think there are too many stories in me left to tell.

Liana: My identity plays a huge part in my artist practice. Coming from a multicultural background, I grew up with confusing parts of many identities that I started learning how to piece together using art. You can see it through the perspectives I create in my work, from visual cues to strong words.

Jessica: Identity is a huge part of my work, I'm constantly trying to understand it through my work. Trying to understand my position in my family, in my lineage and how that translate to who I am outside of that. Who I am alone.