Saturday, April 19, 2008

walker, satrapi, and nafisi...some really powerful women

last wednesday, i got to go to l.a. with my feminist concepts and strategies class (more on this later) to see some really amazing and inspiring works.

first, we visited the hammer museum for kara walker's "my complement, my enemy, my oppressor, my love" exhibit. i think walker might be one of my favorite artists, if not my favorite, right now. she uses a variety of different mediums, but she's most well-known for her amazing silhouette cutouts. her works really question the notion of race, gender, and sexuality. she challenges the conventional narratives of american history and the antebellum south. in other words, her works can create tension and uneasiness in the viewers, but i just absolutely love, love her works! she's at the hammer museum at ucla until june 8, 2008, and then the exhibit moves onto the modern art museum in fort worth, texas, after that! i am excited because i'll be in fort worth during the summer, and i did not have enough time to really take in everything.

these are my two favorite pieces from her. keep in mind that these pieces were adhered directly to the walls, and they are massive in scale:

"gone, an historical romance of a civil war as it occurred between the dusky thighs of one young negress and her heart" (1994)

"cut" (1998)

after dinner, we made our way over the ucla's royce hall to hear a conversation between marjane satrapi and azar nafisi, lead by alicia anstead.

 satrapi & nafisi 

marjane satrapi is the creator of the wonderfully humourous and heartbreaking graphic novel, "persepolis", which is basically her memoir of growing up in iran during the islamic revolution. when i first picked up "persepolis", i could not stop reading it. i had to get my hands on the second book and finished both without stopping to do much of anything else. i cried, i laughed, and i fell in love. i really recommend everyone to read this. it's such an easy read, yet it allows the readers to be exposed to some serious matters in a very light-hearted way. and if you don't like to read, a movie was just recently made from the graphic novels.



unfortunately, i don't know very much about azar nafisi. she's best known as the author of the national bestseller "reading lolita in tehran: a memoir in books", which is her account of the struggle she and her students had to go through during the islamic revolution. i definitely would like to pick up this book when i have time over the summer, because from hearing her speak, i can only imagine how wonderful the book is.



the conversation between the two women were hilarious. they talked about everything, from people losing imagination and creativity to people connecting throughout the world to enjoying the simple things of life. i am not doing justice to the very amusing conversation between the two women. all in all, i had an incredible night.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

it's not the ending yet.

the past few weeks have been super draining on me. since coming back from spring break, the workload has significantly increased.

now what you all probably don't know is i'm a senior who is graduating in december 2008. that means, i am taking a semester longer to finish my degree, which is not bad for someone who just switched her major last semester. up until i left to go study abroad in new zealand a year ago (spring 2007), i had been taking regular math classes for my math-tracked degree. but i knew even then that i didn't want to do anything with my math degree after i graduated from college anyway, because i was more interested in things like event planning or arts and crafts, and the math degree was just to prove to people that i do have a brain. but i was struggling with it. boy, was i struggling. i didn't have as strong of a math background as other kids coming into harvey mudd, and i could have still finished the degree had i chosen to do so. however, my passion didn't lie there, and i figured this out when i studied abroad. but of course, i was too scared then to switch, and it took coming back to harvey mudd and signing up for six math courses in one semester that did me in.

but i don't regret any part of that journey. right now, i am doing what i love, even if i'm not sure this is what i want to do after i graduate. okay, i digress. this wasn't what i was going to write about. i just wanted you to know that i have that extra semester, that's all.

one semester isn't much, but i keep forgetting that most of my friends will be graduating this may, as in, in a month! in a month, we will all go our separate ways. in a month, they'll all either start their new lives in their new jobs or grad schools or some other options. and i'll still be at mudd for another semester. but what gets to me, is that until the end of the semester, i still have a lot of work i have to complete, including making four different movies for my classes. since i have to do those on top of my normal assignments, it leaves me little time to actually spend with these friends before we all disperse. i don't know when i will be able to see these folks again, since we all came from different parts of the country or the world. and i still have to find a job for the summer, which i haven't been too successful looking for a graphics designing job or a video editing job. so i think the purpose of this post is just me worrying about how i'm going to juggle everything until the end of the semester and how i was going to prepare myself for graduation day. i think i blabbed too much.