UNLEARN

How often do we question the way we perceive the world around us? How many of us recognize that our interpretation of events, human behavior, and culture is filtered through a distorted prism of personal and limited experiences? These subjective realities, mistaken for universal truths, contaminate our awareness of the act of interpretation itself.

 

There is no interpretation without destruction and violation.

 

The act of explanation—the process of interpreting the original—is, inevitably, an act of contamination.

 

Through Unlearn, a visual triptych created using collage as its medium, I explore the process of reinterpreting and reclaiming meaning. Collage allows me to actively assemble and transform existing materials, questioning dominant narratives and exposing the misinterpretations embedded in our social and political consciousness. This series seeks not to create definitive meanings but to deconstruct and challenge the normative perceptions that have shaped how we see and understand the world. 

 

Each piece within Unlearn confronts a distinct dimension of power, exploitation, and distortion

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1.THIS IS NOT YOUR DRESS-UP critiques cultural appropriation, the exoticization of minority cultures, and the paternalistic attitudes often directed toward marginalized communities. The layering of faces, traditional attire, and cultural imagery juxtaposed with the refrain "THIS IS NOT YOUR DRESS-UP" underscores the theft and commodification of cultural identity. It asks: Who has the right to claim these symbols, and what does it mean when they are stripped of their context for consumption?

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2.THIS IS NOT YOUR PLAYGROUND was created in response to political leaders' careless displays of dominance, this piece reflects on the dehumanizing cost of geopolitical power struggles. Against a chaotic chessboard backdrop symbolizing strategy and control, the visual collage conveys the horrors of war—displaced families, shattered lives, and the ongoing genocide of  children around the world. The repeated phrase "THIS IS NOT YOUR PLAYGROUND" demands accountability and challenges the normalization of war as a tool for political negotiation.

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3.THIS IS NOT YOUR SPECTACLE critiques the pervasive male gaze in art history, which has long commodified female bodies as objects of desire and resistance. By recontextualizing fragments of fine art paintings and sculptures alongside contemporary imagery, this collage interrogates why these violative spectacles endure. Who sustains their artistic value, and why? Would their worth exist without the objectifying lens that denies female agency? THIS IS NOT YOUR SPECTACLE calls for a reevaluation of what we preserve, celebrate, and perpetuate in art and culture.