Paper Mache

So I've done 3 performance/video pieces since the box piece.

A piece about colors and their associations with race, specifically pertaining to how my identity on paper is often ambiguous and leads people to paint their own picture of what I may look like and these painted perceptions are not the most apt depictions.

First Name: Amanda (American)
Last Name: Silva (Portuguese)
Citizenship: United States
Ethnicity: Asian

The other pieces I did was one where I was wrapped in plastic wrap and had to escape, with only one roll of plastic wrap approximately 100 yards, it took me a little over 4 minutes and when wrapped in 2 rolls it took me 11 minutes. The other piece I did was covering myself in paper mache, but I'm not sure how much of the performance is on footage because the camera died. 

I'm beginning to discover that all of what my work from where I see is challenging the idea of artists. Andy brought up throughout our seminar how it's so interesting that we are making careers out of something that doesn't necessarily serve a function. Our "job" is to create, and much of the time not many people understand why artists do what they do, but in the same sense with performance artists- even some artists don't understand why they do what they do. Today as I was walking the half hour back to my apartment covered in paper mache and not wearing much more than my underwear. I realized that my purpose as an artist the purpose of my art for my audience is to provoke them. Provoke them to respond to what it is that they do not understand. Today was successful. Not sure how successful the documentation of it was, but being able to provoke the discussion was vital. To have people thinking that something terrible had happened to me, that someone had just tortured me was the general consensus from masses outside of the AU community. People in cars, trucks, riding their bikes, commuters all asked if something happened to me. Considering something does happen to you, we suffer in our own way, we torture ourselves and take chances that many don't take. We take that ballsy approach to be where someone has not, and it's this humiliation that empowers art. What would make one vulnerable, results in empowerment instead.