Digital Self Portrait (2021)

For my class "Digital Foundations," we were asked to use Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to create a digital self portrait. For my digital self portrait, I wanted to explore the ideas of technology, as seen through a techno-orientalist lens, and how it pertained to my identity. Growing up watching a lot of sci-fi movies, it was not missed upon me the often random and frequent bits of Asian imagery placed in the sets of films like Blade Runner and Cloud Atlas to portray a cold dystopian society. Not only did these visuals objectify and mix up different Asian cultural items such as clothing from across cultures and languages to create a monolithic representation of Asia, it also was fetishization and dehumanizing to the cultures I had grown up with and were a part of. The titular “self” in my series is an unrecognizable spirit created by the concept of techno-orientalism that possesses the Asian subject it objectifies. I wanted to take the concept of this possession literally, by making each of my pieces an “exorcism” of this techno-orientalist self. By using neon and bright colors that mimic the techno-orientalist visual dystopias, as well as using traditional characters and structures from Korean exorcism rituals, I try to portray this exorcism of a 2-D, fetishized version of the self. I wanted to present my work also in a similar manner, using a table with offerings for spirits often used in Korean exorcisms as the environment for my work. The art pieces then are placed behind the table, in spots where traditionally talisman or pictures of spirits or individuals are located in a ritual.