My topic is on immigration but focuses on undocumented immigrants. There are two artists that caught my attention the most out of the artists that I researched and they were Tatyana Fazlalizadeh and Felipe Baeza. Tatyana Fazlalizadeh has some projects that truly inspire me and are connected to my project. Some of the projects that I liked are: A Portrait of My Father as an Alien and America is Black. "Portrait of My Father as an Alien" was an oil painting of her dad's resident ID card he received when he immigrated from Iran. I loved how she took the image of her dad as an Alien, as depicted by the United States, and brought awareness so others can see her father as more than an "Alien", so they can realize that he is a father, a husband, a friend, a human being with the same rights as anyone born here. She callenges people to be aware and careful of criminalizing immigrants just for being immigrants or undocumented and instead lift them up and respect them and their rights in the United States. Her street art “America is Black” had the words “America is Black. It is Native. It Wears A Hijab. It is a Spanish Speaking Tongue. It is Migrant. It is a Woman. It is Here. It Has Been Here. And It’s Not Going Anywhere painted on a wall in Oklahoma. She basically painted a diverse group of women and said, “This piece was done specifically to challenge whiteness and the accepted idea of who an American is.This work is declaring that people who are non-white and male are a part of this country, are integral to this country, and are not going anywhere” ( HuffPost, Frank). On another note, Felipe Baeza also had some projects that I felt motivated by and related to my project well and they were: Untitled (so much darkness, so much brownness), The Forgotten and Underlying Borders. The project, “Untitled (so much darkness, so much brownness), Forgotten and Underlying Borders” all have one message to them and that is that Americans focus on the negative connotation given to immigrants but never focus on the part of this being a country that promises to fulfill dreams and that immigrants are ‘real’ people trying to succeed in a country that is native to them and they are not all criminals.
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| The Forgotten |
Consecutively, both of these artists have created activist artwork as i explained before and they’ve used their artwork to create advocacy and bring awareness to different topics. For example, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh focuses a lot of her artwork not only on immigration but women and their rights. I will link down below some of her artwork but she likes to bring awareness that it’s not ok to cat-call women just because they are dressed a certain way. Felipe Baeza creates advocacy and brings awareness to immigration by making people realize that everyone deserves an equal opportunity by using his graphic artwork which I will also link below. The details in Baeza’s art captivates people and it paints out this world’s harsh reality. Thus, I will raise awareness by creating a video that opens the eyes of blind Americans who brand undocumented immigrants as criminals, rapists, job-stealers, etc., and allow them to see life through their eyes.
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| Tatyana Fazlalizadeh's "Portrait of My Father as an Alien," 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/t-magazine/immigration-art.html https://ruthprokopchuk.wixsite.com/migraciones-y-arte/post/portrait-of-my-father-as-an-alien |
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