(Ad)dress
Project details
- Year
- 2023
- Programme
- Bachelor – Photography
- Practices
- Social
- Minor
- Cultural Diversity
For my graduation project I will work with the concept of how your surroundings influence the way you present yourself through clothing. The clothes you wear can be a nonverbal way to show your identity. The way you dress can be influenced or restricted by the situation you are in, the places you go or the people around you.
I will take a personal approach to visualize this with the use of fabrics, paint and photography. I got inspired by babushka-dolls because of the symbolism behind them. Babushkas symbolize female fertility. The largest doll depicts a mother watching over her family. Some keywords that you can think of here are tradition, family, femininity and layering. These are important because my mother and my family influenced me a lot because of their traditions.
I made four dolls which symbolize all a part of me. The biggest babushka is the outside which symbolizes how I present myself to others. The other three represent my hidden sides. These are my dreamy side, my emotional side and my adventures side. I have not only made these dolls but also matching clothes that I can wear myself to show others my hidden sides.
In this project I used different shapes, color and patterns to visualize my different faces. Certain elements are repeated in the different dolls because that way I can show different sides of my identity.
With this project I want to show that because of my cultural background and expectations from my social environment, my family, certain things such as emotions and ideals cannot or may not show.
I find it difficult to just be myself. Given the expectations my social environment places on me, I still have a hard time being myself, although I’m getting better over the years. I therefore try to find a balance between the expectations placed on me and the image I want to convey of myself.
