Mary and max

Thinking about our discussion in class regarding autism and mental illness, I wanted to share this film:

Mary and Max. Its a clay animation film about a girl whose mother suffers from mental illness and a man with autism who form a friendship despite their differences. The film gives a really unique perspective into the minds of two characters who just want answers to life's key questions. It's on Netflix instant queue so you really have no excuse not to watch it! (If you don't have Netflix we can have a movie night)

Stigma and Disability

"Finally, stigma theory reminds us that the problems we confront are not disability, ethnicity, race, class homosexuality, or gender; they are instead the inequalities, negative attitudes, misrepresentations, and institutional practices that result from the process of stigmatization.( Thomson, 1997, p. 32)" 

I was reading Theorizing Disability, and this quote spoke to me, because the perception of mind creates the the inferior thinking against for both the people with the disability and others without the disability. I think that the imagined and idealized form of body within the group, in other words, society creates dangerous thought process and idea of normal; thus, it creates the stigma around the subject--in this case, body and the different body. 

I often see some note like--"adjustment to disability"at my internship site when a client is referred to the art therapy. Most of these clients were recently gone through the big changes in their lives. It is hard for them to see their body changes in a positive way because it is different from before. I respect/admire their efforts to make adjustments and courage to keep themselves up, because the difference sometimes means hard. However, I think this difference looking at this subject matter, 'disability' needs to take one step further to look at people with 'disability' on the same level. So they are not different but the same in the view of human existence; thus they are not inferior. 

Autoethnography

Korean.
Buddhist.
Painter.

These are interrelated different identities that I correspond with.

I struggled to be a Korean because of my mixed environment that I grew up. I was hiding in my closet with a flashlight after 11pm every night to finish my homework when I was in the high school. I tried to speak well and do well in this English speaking world. But I couldn't not be the American, because I was Korean. When I realized this, I didn't have to try so hard on myself any more. Also, Theses years were worthy, because it gave me an opened eye to understand America and Americans better, moreover, cultures, values, the difference in general.

I was born in a buddhist family. But I didn't think about being a buddhist seriously until 2008(though I some time to time said that I wanted to be a buddhist nun to mother when I was a child.) But now, this is one of the strongest identities I find myself. I do not know how to explain my understandings of it, how they affected me. The learnings and all practices really helped me to see things without ends, to see the unseen etc. I constantly try to "know myself."

I paint because I survive. This is what I think every Wednesday when I drag my body to the painting studio. I need to paint in order to function normally without getting depressed. I can forget things that is attached from everything around me and paint so painting is my exit to my own world. It's a step to my wonderland, that I can focus on me.

Buy Art Not People

After researching human trafficking in the Chicago, I interviewed the program director from the STOP-IT Program (which you can read about on our other blog), but she lead me to 2 very interesting art shows.  One is actually happening tonight and I wanted to share the information with you guys.

Youth in the Sex Trade: from Exploitation to Empowerment
Monday, April 30
1505 W. Chicago Avenue
7 p.m.
Special Guest Rachel Lloyd of GEMS and author of "Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not For Sale, an Activist Finds her Calling and Heals Herself."
Cost: $10 to benefit CAASE and Traffick Free. 


And the other art event is through Buy Art Not People and it is on May 19th.

Where are all the men?

My supervisor and I briefly had a discussion about men in art therapy that I wanted to bring up on the blog to you all. During one of our group sessions, my supervisor invited her friend, another art therapist, to lead an art making session to teach our group a new sculpture technique. We noticed that her friend, who happened to be male, had a specific effect on our female members. Our group does have male members however, the two co-facilitators and myself are female. My supervisor and I had a discussion about it and compared it to one of the museum programs that I also help her with where the female participants seemed so smitten with one of the male art therapists.

It's no secret that men are a rarity in our field and I think it's important to talk about that. Other fields that are primarily female have similar discussions: At last year's National Art Education Conference, there was a presentation titled, "Where are all the men?". A part of me, honestly, wants to reply, who cares?

While I do identify as a feminist, I am definitely in no way anti-men and I definitely think it's important to have male art therapists, for the same reason it is important to have diversity in art therapy. HOWEVER, do fields that lack women (i.e. politics, business, engineering) ever question, where are all the women? Are we, and other female-dominated fields, asking for men in order to validate and justify our field?

The lack of men in our field I think needs to be readdressed as a diversity issue as opposed to a gender issue - what do you think?

Auto Ethnography

 

In 1795, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach published his final taxonomy of race, dividing the world population into five categories based on physical features and geographical location. Each of these five categories were further generalized into color:

 - Caucasian variety (white): light-skinned people of Europe and
   surrounding areas
 - Mongolian variety (yellow): eastern Asia
 - Ethiopian variety (black): dark-skinned people of Africa
 - American variety (red): native peoples of the New World
 - Malay variety (brown): Pacific islands and native peoples of Australia
   (aborigines)

This model was an expansion of Linnaean's four-race system, radically shifting the thought that geography alone defined race and added the hierarchy of worth.

This compartmentalization does not allow for cross-cultural relations to be a reality. In examining my own family, I cannot fathom how we would fit into any model. I decided that in order to understand, I needed to create my family tree using this "original modern racial classification".

Autoethnography

This piece represents my connection with my Cuban culture and the culture of South Florida. As I was making this painting, I felt as if I have been making it over and over all semester long. It seemed so repetitive. But for some reason that is where I am now. The longer I live away from what I always called home, the more I long to connect to it. I haven't lived in Miami for almost 7 years now yet I find myself connecting to the culture and seeing it more and more as a part of who I am.

This piece literally bridges my family's Cuban culture with the South Florida culture I grew up in with my family's passport pictures. My face is made up of old family photos. Some of people I knew growing up... Some who I never met... Yet all make up who I am today. This painting also emphasizes my connection to strong women in my family. All of the pictures are of my mother's side of the family and of her mother's side of the family. Being raised by strong women who didn't know they were strong also made me who I am today. I was always encouraged to be independent and never to depend on others. I was led by examples that they did not know they were setting.

At this point in my life, I have one year left of grad school and my boyfriend has two. I am from South Florida, he is from Central New York. We have already discussed where we would like to be in a few years, when we are done with school and trying to figure out where we are going to live. It is physically impossible to live near both families. This realization that my time away from my family will suddenly become "permanent" is what I feel is drawing me to hold on to as much as my culture as possible.

How will I pass on my culture? My boyfriend is white, and does not speak Spanish. If I want my children to hold on to my culture it rests on my shoulders... They will most likely not grow up like I did. In a city where I was not a minority, where the majority (if not all at some points) of my friends' parents were immigrants, where my culture took over...

Going to college was in many ways like going to another country for me. Its a concept thats hard to explain unless you have grown up where I did, but college was the first time I felt like I stood out. I stood out in a good way, I felt special, I wasn't one of many anymore. This positive experience with having my culture separate me from the rest was probably due to the fact that it happened in college and not elementary school when it was more importnat to fit in. I grew up in a place where growing up a "minority" was very different than it would have been anywhere else in the US. Therefore, as I have mentioned many times before my "Miami culture" and the inclusion I got from being cuban-american is just as much of who I am as my "Cuban culture.

This is a topic I will continue to explore... I will probably paint this/create this idea over and over again. As a cuban-american who looks and sounds "white" I feel the need to constantly legitimize myself as a minority. Which is probably part of the reason I feel the need to continually address this topic. I am interested to see where this goes...