If I were Black or Asian (english version)

If I were Black or Asian...

I'm Marylou, I’m 16 and a High School pupil at Saint-Eugène. I'm keen on listening to music, exploring new artists or bands, and playing guitar. I try to be tolerant and respectful of others, but I can be a bit mocking sometimes!

I took two digital photographs in black and white of myself which I then “morphed”, using a Web site programme, into an “Asian” me and then a “Black” me. I then had the morphed pictures greatly enlarged for visual impact. The images are disconcerting by their size and graininess (showing up the pixels), and the slightly forced expressions of the girl. Marylou does not look quite real; it’s as if she is hiding behind a mask.

What’s the idea?
With this work of art, I would like people to reconsider their way of looking at and thinking about people whose physical features are different from their own.
In these pictures, I have another face, a different skin colour, but am I not the same person? Do I change character or values because my phenotype is different? What do you notice first: my skin colour or the fact that I am sad or happy?
An individual’s mind is largely conditioned by the fact that he is part of a particular ethnic group or culture, If but it is also other people’s way of looking at you as someone “Black” or “White” or “Asian” that influences how we see ourselves, sometimes negatively. If I were truly Black or Asian, I would not be allowed to be the same Marylou, though my feelings would be as strong.
When will we go beyond stereotypes and see people as they are as individuals with whom we can share the same sentiments?

How have others addressed the issue of self-perception and stereotypes?
If a person judges another negatively just because he or she does not have the same skin colour or even nationality, then that is racism. Many artists, film-makers, and writers have denounced racism and intolerance:

"J'irai cracher sur vos tombes" by Boris Vian denounces the racism and the terrible conditions in which African Americans lived in the South of the United-States. The story, set in the 1940s, is about a man who is White in appearance but born of Black parents. One day he decides to go into town to avenge his brother, hung because he had loved a White woman. Mentalities have evolved since the story was written, but, if the racist comments by many Whites in parts of America regarding Barak Obama are anything to go by, not that much...

Michael Jackson’s facial features changed during his career. Originally Black, this singer mutated into someone whose face was completely white. Was it the result of a skin ailment, or did he want to become White, and if so why? Maybe for him “Black is beautiful” was just not true.

The White journalist John Howard Griffin in his book “Black Like Me” recounts his experience in the South of the United-States. He made himself up to look like an African American, in order to observe “from the inside” Black people’s conditions. He noted that the divide between Whites and Blacks is great. They don't visit the same places, have separate places on the bus and have different social codes. A Black person won't speak to a White person openly for fear of the consequences. The two worlds coexist but there is no mixing, this divide accentuating mutual incomprehension. This book was important in making Whites more aware of what Blacks had to suffer.

The psychologist Frantz Fanon explains in his book “Peau noire, masques blancs” the damage inflicted on the minds of Black people in colonized countries: their sense of self and of belonging was completely undermined. The fact that some members of ethnic minorities cannot accept their physical appearance in a White-dominated culture, to the extent of believing that they are actually physically White, is still unfortunately true (cf. the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrHNKC452G4&NR=1&feature=fvwp).


A work of art chosen from the Museum’s collection
To complement my work, I have chosen the wooden sculpture of a face. I think it’s beautiful in its simplicity and enigmatic gaze. Who is she, what is she thinking? We know little about this work, other than it is Fulani, from Western or Central Africa. It probably has little commercial value (it is not rare or original), but who cares? I find it really gives off something and it goes very well with the idea of my work: let us go beyond appearance to try and understand the person “within”!