textual poaching: an identity remix

 

For this assignment, I wanted to incorporate elements of myself that are very important to who I am. I was excited when I thought about this idea because it touches on ideas about both my religion and my gender. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and many Christian religions, many of the narratives are centered around men. This has not always bothered me, but as I grew older and more self-aware, I began to wonder about this male-centered narrative. In recent years, the people of the church have been talking more about Heavenly Mother. When I read the description for this assignment, I began to think about the role that our Heavenly Mother plays in narratives that traditionally exclude any sort of female presence. In my depiction of the first vision, I did not want Heavenly Mother to replace the presence of Heavenly Father or Jesus, but I did want her to have a prominent role in the scene. I started to think about what she would have done if she was there, and that’s when I decided to depict her comforting Joseph. I felt like this assignment was very interconnected with Barney’s reading because of the way I was forced to interpret a historical piece through a modern lens. A lot of the art that was created about the first vision is old because the first vision happened a long time ago. The idea of Heavenly Mother, however, is something that has only been depicted in art during the more recent decades. Just like the students in Ms. Rao’s class, I had to practice combining historical and modern lenses to create something unique and personal.