Manifesto of the subtle rebellion

Since before you were born till whatever age you are now, societal pressures and societal influences have surrounded you like the atoms in the air. Some of these pressures and influences have made your identity today. These societal biases don’t have to necessarily come from society but usually the root of it does. Identity is like making a never ending sandwich; with layers and layers of food on a slice of sponge-like bread. The day you were born was where this sandwich began, and as you grow you add more stuff. If you don’t like the things that are put on the sandwich you can take it off anytime you please, and put it right back on when you crave it again, but that memory of identity will always be embedded into the bread. Many people tell you what to put on your sandwich but my work aims to rebel against this.Once we identify who we are, it really doesn’t matter what other people say. As you learn who you are, who you want to be, it’s going to get confusing, and tough, and you may want to quit but why quit on yourself when you’ve already started. In order to learn about you, to begin this rebellion, the past layers of your identity have to help, the identities surrounding you have to help. It’s impossible to start from a clean slate; it's impossible to start with a new piece of bread because the juices of your past identities have made their mark.

Identities are always changing so there’s no such thing as an end goal, or stopping point. Identity and its layers have many elements to it depending on the individual, it could be playful, crazy, fun, pleasurable, sad, traumatizing, frustrating, etc. This rediscovery of self is not tangible, but it is what we- individually- really hold to be certain in this limitless process. Everyone's certitude is different, and it may change as much as the adult human body changes throughout a 24 hour time. All or most of our identities are wrapped up in the things we do everyday, so now especially in this time of disruption, stagnation, and lack of motivation how do we rediscover ourselves? How can we motivate self and each other to do the work? How do we rediscover our present and future selves? I often find pleasure in discovering the many varieties of societal norms, stereotypes, beauty standards and false histories, that are out in the world and that people face. In the process of this work we slowly started to discover and discuss our identities. We discovered how we can rebel against all of these biases through a few artists. Artists including Solange, William Pope .L, and Jacolby Satterwhite, to name a few. All of these artists are going against the no’s that society is telling them and going against self. What do we really hold to be true? How do we rediscover what we hold to be true for our present and future selves?