The Division Theme Paintings - Thesis Example

 I moved to a country, which I expected to be the beacon of equality in the world. I found myself proven wrong, as I still stumble across instances of social partitions.

It has appeared to me as though everywhere I go, the division is going to be a fact of life. Division simply alters its form; its pangs are nevertheless as lethal. I could have lost my life in Iraq; I stand to crush my spirit in America. I approach my artworks from the feministic perspective that highlights all the more my fate in the patriarchal society. I followed the lead of symbolist painters – that is, I used symbols to represent my thoughts and colors and lines to make known to the public my emotions that accompany my intellectual concerns.

Art and painting is the political tool that suits my individuality and more effectively brings to the forefront my personal struggles, which I believe other people, despite our cultural differences, may relate to.
Statement of the problem
This artistic activity intends to accomplish my self-disclosure of my self-identity (Franchi & Duncan, 2007, pp. 150). It is an attempt to communicate and share with others my personal life struggles, or the contents – so to speak – of my personal identity as well as my contextually shifting individuality.

I am shaped by my evolving subjectivity. I came from the Middle East; I was born an Iraqi. I am now living in the United States of America, where I am not only politically and legally an alien but also more significantly socially and culturally alienated. By the same token, I am formed by my changing environment. Iraq was my original milieu. I knew it before the Americans “freed” us from whom they regarded as our tyrant leader. Life was hard then, but it was my country. The Americans came, and I personally experienced the horrors of war.

My first environment was changed. I moved to America, where everything is completely new to me even my experiences of discrimination by the local population. As I reveal my personal identity through my paintings, I would like to study and ascertain how the struggle of one person’s life experiences can unite different cultures. Human beings as we are, we all have our shares of struggles in life. On account of these struggles, a common bond that transcends the cultural divide forms among us. Human beings are capable of sympathy and empathy.

At the core of our being, we share an element with the rest of humanity. The overriding theme for my artistic activity is aptly captured by the phrase “The Division.” The word division tells of my personal experience. But, what the Americans started amidst my people resulted to further division. In fact, not even their presence could deter the ugly head of dissection across the various sectors of Iraqi society from protruding and showing itself to the open (see Dakss, 2006). As I made my way to another country, I still find myself not spared from division because the local people discriminate against me simply on account of my cultural origin.