Hot en tot by Renee Cox

The artwork is a photo portrait of the artist with wearing nothing but plastic breasts as a bra and a plastic butt. The main features of the photo are that there is an almost naked woman wearing fake parts which is what many viewers would be drawn to straight away. This provoking and graphic imagery of a black women openly creates a parody of the standards that our society generates. These standards include the role of woman, the views of each race and the ever-changing perceptions of what an ideal human body looks like. This photograph’s context specifically leans towards the medias portrayal of black woman. This is emphasised by her literal fake breast made from plastic which replicates the medias general image of black woman which becomes more persistent than ever in mainstream music today. However, this photo also emits a strong confidence and integrity of the artist through her openness and the fact that she is looking straight at the camera with conviction only adds to her pride. This pride as a result can be the overall message of the photo for accepting one’s body, race and gender. Therefore, it attacks the ideas of the social norms in modern society as well as historical viewpoints on an absolute standard for being an ideal human being.

The task in which these works are based on was to create passport of yourself which could be presented in any way you feel. I stuck to the traditional form of a passport which is a booklet form and my first design had an overall darker theme. Each page is decorated by ripped up paper to give a rough scrappy look to it. The dark colour scheme is meant to fit in with my interest of German expressionist printmaking which is stated on the third page. The Biro drawing of the tree is to show my interest in decaying environments.

After near completion of my first passport I decided to explore with bright colour. I then started to create ideas for another passport that primarily had the colours red, yellow, blue and green. I created different patterns for each page using layers of neatly cut out paper as opposed to ripped sheets. This passport is intentionally much smaller to reflect on my lesser inclination to used bright colours and results in a fun way of showing my basic  identity.

To Develop my passports further, I would try to make it make it more personal in a way that it encompasses a wider aspect of my life rather than just myself. To do this I would have included sketches of my family in each page and perhaps use an A3 page to completely expose my life in front of people rather than being a closed book in which you have to make the effort of opening it up to know about me.