My Body./?

My Body./?(2022) was the second project given to me from my Painting 2 class. The prompt was to paint either a figure or parts of a figure or the absence of a body. I knew I wanted to do a portrait because faces have always been my strength when it came to my art. This time, however, I wanted to bring in a facet of myself that I had never explored before: my Nigerian upbringing, particularly the tension it came with my American socialization. The main tension I wanted to explore was the values of how the body should be exploited in American culture versus the Nigerian one. In this case, I decided to explore the different values in reference to how a woman is expected to use her body. With my socialization in a somewhat less traditional environment, I see myself not going through the expected Nigerian traditions of bearing children and rasing a family; however, I may change that thought. This is why I made the decision to leave my self-portrait undeveloped compared to my mother's developed portrait, draped in traditional Nigerian regalia.
Continuing my motif of having symbols can be seen in the hidden biological symbol for men throughout the pots and pans at the bottom of the painting, along with the baby hand gripping the symbol like a rattle at the top. This represents the other layer that resonates not only in Nigerian culture but also in the American one; it illustrates that even though these two portraits take up the majority of the canvas and there is no explicit rendition of a male figure in the piece, the constructed inferiority of women compared to men is incredibly strong.