Thoughts Provoking

the Sesnon Underground presented work by artist and student Sérab. Thoughts Provoking will run from February 22nd- March 2nd, 2018. Closing Reception was March 2nd from 6-9pm with a special film screening at said event.

Thoughts Provoking is essentially a set of certain thoughts, and even mindless jargon at times. It is constructed with four internal monologues in a set of twenty stills, eight of which are installed currently with the prose. When I was making the project I first did not know where I was going and kept having to change my theme until I was courageous enough to share some of my internal conflicting thoughts. I knew that when I was thinking of ideas and sharing them with my peers, I wasn’t fully truthful with how personal my project was going to get, and to be honest, I didn’t know how personal it would be.

Writing has always been part of my life whether I knew it or not. I started my art career with lettering and I was able to express myself through graffiti which made me have a deep understanding and care for art and letters. Throughout my childhood, creative writing was also an expressive form of art for me. Having strict parents and living in a dangerous neighborhood meant not being able to play outside most of the time, and having to be in the home before sundown. Movies were always part of my life as well, and as I grew older and went to college, I got pretty good at analyzing them. I was going to follow through in becoming a double major with film but I had no time for that. Photography though, was a gateway to expressing the way I was able to capture and see the world in my eyes and I am grateful for that.

My project is called thoughts provoking, and is based off the first piece of writing that introduces the project. It is also the only poem written during the day while the rest were created late, during sleepless nights. I wanted to move forward with this project and finally bring to structure a way to express what I always wrote but never shared. They say that art reveals so much about a person, but I also believe that writing reveals more about a person’s character. I'm afraid sometimes because of the reception I think my art will receive but that is part of the process. This piece of work stems from an earlier project is titled, Ode to Self. I wanted to expand on this idea of combining different forms of art such as photography, writing, and music, but that was just the beginning. As I said before, I didn’t think the project was going to get personal but it went there. Thoughts provoking essentially was a way to feel something. To be able to show that I feel something, because most of the time, I’m careless or my mind tends to push things to the side and forget about them. This project gave me time to analyze my subconscious, because I believe that is where all my real emotions are kept. It isn't a project about my conscious, it is about my subconscious and the way I am coming to understand why these certain emotions stay there. Most of the writing is done while inebriated and most of my emotions are revealed in a different state of mind. I want to know what it is I am hiding, and I was afraid that if I did not fully research this idea I wouldn’t have had a solid piece of work that I am proud to show.

My inspirations for doing this work have been artists like Todd Hido and Michael Kenna, but that was early on. My work since then has drastically developed through the many artists I began to be inspired by. I began to shoot with different changes in white balance and through this I was able to find my photographic “eye”. This style stems from the many years of watching films, specifically horrors or dramas. I was able to capture many eerie scenes and because most are shot in the night, it evokes a sense of uncertainty in the stills. I began to look at how horror films use lighting at night, along with studying lighting techniques with Professor Karlic. I was able to have a better understanding as to how light bounces and travels. This then led me to explore the works of David Fincher, and Edward Hopper. Moreover, I began to look back at many films that I have watched that have captivated my eye through the attention to detail in every shot such as, Donnie Darko, The Shining, and most of Guillermo Del Toro films. The book that I was introduced to in class also carried a lot of knowledge, including the works of Christopher Stewart which influenced the way I look at a frame. I then began to look at many other artist works that I was recommended such as, Latoya Ruby Frazier’s, The Notion of Family, which deeply influenced the way I was able to capture personal photographs of my loved ones. The Notion of Family was the set of photos that helped me open up and capture some hard photographs that I otherwise would not have been able to capture. This series will later be turned into a publication and has already sparked the beginning to a new series which will be entitled, Frailty Syndrome.

-Sérab