The Student Curators'

Self-portrait

The self-portrait artworks were created in “Seeing Each Other: Identity Self-Portraits,” a workshop on April 13 and 20, 2021 co-taught by Professor Liena Vayzman and Professor Dahlia Elsayed, Fine Arts Program, Humanities Department, CUNY LaGuardia Community College, co-sponsored by Transformative Learning in the Humanities at CUNY, an initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation.

My name is Nour Mohsen. I came from Egypt. I am studying Industrial Design at LaGuardia Community College. In my self-portrait, I chose some of the most important things that represent my life. I decided to draw one of the pyramids, of Khafre (خفرع), in the background with the Egyptian flag above it, representing my culture and where I came from. As all Egyptians, I love football, whether playing or watching football matches, so I represent it in my self-portrait with a (Soccer) Ball symbol. I have played video games from when I was 10 years old until now. Playing games was my favorite thing to do. I drew a gaming mouse in the bottom left of the portrait to represent how the gaming world took place in my life. I connected all those symbols with a drawing of myself looking back toward the things that represent myself both past and present. For the border, I used the ancient Egyptian language (Hieroglyphics) which was carved into walls, which represents my Egyptian culture. For this self-portrait, I used a pencil and a marker on a drawing pad.

My name is Scottie Norton. I am an aspiring illustrator and animator currently studying Digital Media. For my self portrait, I used a 3D rendering app called Blender to create an 8-second looping animation called Late Bloomer. It shows a figure representing myself with flowers cascading out of his head, and five hands surrounding the body. As a non traditional student, this artwork represents me pursuing my passion of becoming an artist and “blooming” or discovering my power through art after years of working as a retail manager. I grew up Catholic, and I am inspired by religious, biblical, and occult iconography, particularly with the way that art can use symbolism to deal with the difficult and incomprehensible concept of trauma. Each of the hands represent something different. I chose the image of the pencil in white and the black goblet to represent the positive force of creativity and negative concept of vice. The black hand around my neck symbolizes self-doubt and self-destructive behaviors. Last year I was involved in an attack that broke the right side of my face, and this artwork symbolizes me overcoming this event and emerging with a newfound sense of purpose.

Artwork

I am Daniel Herrera, an Industrial Design major at LaGuardia Community College and a future Architecture major at City College of New York. With my painting, I wanted to show a physical and creative representation of myself. To illustrate this idea, I divided the painting into two pieces. The left side shows my physical self-portrait and the right side represents the creativity coming from my mind. I painted a color explosion full of different paths and figures in contrast to the realistic representation of my face.

My name is Kristen, I am an Asian American artist from Hong Kong, currently studying photography at Laguardia Community College. I chose to base my self-portrait on five words that identify who I am, and repeat them over and over until they fill a silhouette of myself. This is representative of how these words make up who I am in a literal sense. The words “Asian American”, “Dreamer”, and “Immigrant” all refer to my identity as a Chinese immigrant growing up in America, while the words “Gamer” and “Artist” refer to hobbies that are incredibly important to me. The silhouette features a girl wearing floral hair pins. Such hair ornaments are typically matched with traditional Chinese hanfu clothing. The black silhouette was drawn using the software Procreate and text added on in Photoshop.

I chose to create my self-portrait in black and white because of how the contrast of the background puts emphasis on the subject.