Identity Painting – Depicting Identity Through Art

Identity Painting – Depicting Identity Through Art https://www.buhlenkalashe.co.za/work/the-new-african/ Many artists have used art to explore problems of identity throughout the centuries. Despite the fact that our ethnicity or sexuality shapes who we are, identity is fluid rather than fixed. Our personal experiences, as well as the societal realities of our period, might alter our perceptions of ourselves and others. We constantly evaluate our place in the world, as people and as members of communities, no matter where we live. This is especially true for immigrants like myself.

Let us not be constrained by expectations of how we should behave. Let us not be told to be or do something that we do not want to be or do. Let us determine for ourselves what the appropriate times and locations are. Let us say the unsayable and ask the obvious questions. Let us not be scared of being despised, repulsed, disgraced, or having a finger pointed at us. Let us not be bound by meaningless, quantitative labels of age, sex, or race, nor should we use them as justifications; instead, let us utilize those identities to empower and inspire us. Let us only be and create what is genuine to our identities. Let us simply be. Let us not make any concessions. This can be seen in any Youngblood Africa gallery in Cape Town.

Disabled artists have also made regular interventions in the art-audience connection. The 1989 sculptural intervention Wheelchair Entrance by English artist Tony Heaton is a significant early piece in the Disability Arts movement. The piece consisted of a wooden board labelled "wheelchair entrance" that was stretched across a gallery doorway at a height that hindered ambulatory visitors but allowed wheelchair users to pass beneath it. The sculpture served as a simple but efficient way to raise awareness of architectural limitations to mobility among gallery visitors.

Identity politics and issues are not just played out in unusual places or in ways that are novel to art audiences. Many artists make work that may be presented and judged as traditional painting, installation, or sculpture while also delivering a powerful political message about identity painting.

In her self-portraits, she regularly represented her experience of disability (namely, the numerous broken bones and fractures she experienced as a result of a bus accident when she was a teenager, as well as her inability to carry a pregnancy to term, also a result of the accident). Her work emphasizes the intersectional position of her identity as a woman and an artist with a disability, highlighting the relative scarcity of both in museum and gallery collections when examined in depth.

Kahlo has acquired a great level of notoriety, particularly in the twenty-first century, despite the fact that few artists dealing directly with concerns of handicap in their work are represented in museum collections or the worldwide art market.