See me

Flash Fiction:

Women, Muslim, Hijabi,

Heart, Brain, Soul,

Love, Pain, Loss…

Human.

Artist Statement :

In my self portrait I chose to express myself by painting a picture of a girl in a hijab who represents me. The hijab or scarf that I wear is who I am and represents me in many ways, it sets me apart from the rest of the group and gives me the confidence I need to strive and be who I am. But there are also downfalls of wearing the hijab. In my image I used fallen buildings and rubble to represent the pain, struggle, and hardship that I have faced. Not only did the rubble represent the fact of the biases that effect me but also the actual pain and sadness I feel that is always pushed to the background, I chose to put it in the background to show how I always push my struggles, pain, and hardship down and hide it with my outer facade of perfection and joy. It shows that even when the pain and the suffering comes through, it is always kept hidden in the background. I tied this part of my project to my flash fiction where I stated words that every person feels whether its love, loss, or pain and tied it with a Muslim women. Because of the stereotypes about Muslims that the media has created, so many Muslim women are degraded and feel this pain. That is what the rubble represents as well as the hardship that I have personally endured. The yellow flower that is covering my face in the self portrait shows the hope and love that me and all Muslim women have to push through, strive and never give up. I chose the color yellow for its brightness, joy, and feeling of hope.

One pager:

Majority of people have always thought that our personal feelings affect, and even determine the way we see things and therefore how we act in response. They also think that our personalities are who we are, that they can never change. The idea that ever since we were young we had our own personalities that have stayed the same even as we have grown older. Personality theory is a discussion that has been passed around for a very long time.

In Invisibilia’s podcast called “The Personality Myth” she talks about personality theory and the controversy within it. She began talking about personality theory by saying, “Your beliefs and morals manipulate everything you see.” At the end of the podcast Invisibilia goes back to this idea by explaining it a bit more, she talked about how as you grow and develop your beliefs and morals will change as well. She also states that once you re frame the idea you have in your head you can change the way you think. This contradicts Freud’s personality theory, he believed that when faced with a conflict between impulses to do whatever we feel like, and our restraint to control these urges defines who we are. The ideas of Id, ego, and superego, were Freud’s structural model. He thought that a person could only be one of these three structural models, and that was your personality.

Identities are formed through life lessons, and what people were raised around. Identity is very similar to personality, it's who you are. Everyone will see things in different ways, the whole world can't see out of only one lens, everyone has their own specialized lenses. I believe that people can change, with every situation you go through you will learn from what happened and that changes people's mindsets. People grow and develop every day, physically and mentally. Just like Invisibilia said in her podcast about “The Personality Myth”, “When the stuff inside your mind changes, people change.” You don't really have much control over your identity, as people go through life every day they will see, and hear new things that lead them to change in some way, this affects their identity and helps them further adapt to be who they are. Bias is something that everyone in this world has, no  matter who you are or what you believe in you have a bias towards something. There are so many people who are in denial of their biases and don't want to admit they exist or they don't want to push to fix those biases. I have seen bias in many ways, being a Muslim women there are so many people who have implicit and non implicit biases within them based on how the media portrays Muslims. They are bias towards me either because I look different or because I am Muslim. It is possible to fight off some types of biases and change them, but as a human race we will always have biases. Based on what we hear and what we see we obtain biases we don't even know we have. Like the idea that dark chocolate is gross even though you have never tried it. Your bias is that it's gross because that's what people tell you, that's what you have been acquainted to so it's the implicit bias you have within you.