Artist as Activist

     My intentions with this project were to explore the idea of body image through the lens of the belly button. I took photos of 16 different belly buttons and juxtaposed them to illustrate the universal yet diverse nature of belly buttons. Many people are insecure or concerned about the appearance of their belly buttons, and I wanted to use this project to show that all belly buttons are different and all are equally strange when it comes down to it. Belly buttons are also a somewhat intimate body part, and I wanted to push my subjects and viewers to reexamine their relationships with their bodies. I also used belly buttons because they are anonymous and I wanted to show that all people have belly buttons and that the appearance of one's belly button is insignificant and not something to be worried about. My intentions translated pretty directly to my final work, and I would not say that they varied greatly throughout the project as I began with a very specific image of what my final piece would look like. 

     As strange and uncomfortable as this project was to pursue at times, I feel that I am an activist because I think that my work opens a conversation about body image and the appearance of different body parts and how others' perception affects one's view of his or her body. This work is also indicative of me as a practicing artist because I was able to use Photoshop to collage my photographs and arrange them in a way that I found aesthetically pleasing and because I experimented to sketch the concept that I wanted to work with and then directly pursued my idea and refined it throughout the process.