'Monster'.
by Claudia Aceituno
Monster. Acrylic Paint, pens, sharpie, sugar paper, coloured paper, nail polish (it's neon orange but it didn't show in the scan).
One of my favourite characteristics
I like to portray in my work is the element of ‘Loud-mouth’, which I tried to express on this page. It was an open
mouth collage with sugar paper, acrylic paint, nail polish and pens. Instead
of creating a mouth with human colours, I wanted to experiment with different
materials, and express myself without having to adjoin the colours to humans, but
I also wanted it to be bold and attract attention, in the same way my own mouth
does. This helped me conclude that the skin colour of the person, or myself,
was also to be a different colour, but darker as to help flourish the colours
of the mouth. Having always attributed the colour blue (especially dark blue)
with myself, I decided this would be most fitting. It was then that the person became
monstrous.
The braces are particularly
important to this piece. When I got my braces put, it has brought up a lot of conflicting
emotions in me. I felt nostalgia. In my opinion,
no matter the person who has braces, the braces themselves always tend to
demonstrate a sense of youth. Feeling stuck in a child's body when you're an adult is a major part of my art work, and is how I feel a lot of the time. I felt insecure because the braces enforced that into me without permission.
The first of this was ugliness.
Having being satisfied with my buck-tooth personality, it was hard to have
something attached to me that was alien and metallic. The colours show the
alienation from me. Collaging my mouth
with braces was a really great coping mechanism for me to deal with it, as well
as people consoling me. One of my favourite artists is Andy Warhol, and it
always excites me that you are able to present the same picture but still be
able to change it entirely through colour. I think that is present in this
piece.
This brought upon my thoughts of correction
and beauty. Braces themselves are a symbol of correction to aim for an ‘idylic’
state of perfection of some ‘broken’ part of the body (in this case teeth), but
there is not much reason for it besides for that person to become more
physically appealing*. I tried to
demonstrate the agony of this process through the scream, by the waves/the
wrinkles by the face, and the unnatural stretch of the mouth. This includes the
agony of the braces themselves, but also the agony of trying to achieve beauty.
Since this is my second time with
braces, it shows the constant dissatisfaction and forcefulness of mending the body.
The change that we go through may conclude in the person becoming something
else entirely. The braces are a ‘barrier’ to the monster so that it may become ‘corrected’
and more apt for society’s expectations. It may be a barrier to being heard,
because you are seen as childlike. It shows that the struggle of being who you
are and what society wants you to be. There may be no winner in this battle, or
maybe they are interchangeable, which is why the monster/creature looks human,
despite unnatural colours and size.
