Gallery Response Assignment : Julie Green

                                     

"Thank God Im Home"

"At Home With Family"

  Julie Lynn Green was an artist who specialized in gastronomy, fashion, and capital punishment. She made a large series of porcelain plates with paintings depicting the last meals criminals ordered before being executed. Green began painting these meals on secondhand porcelain dinner plates, up to 50 each year, with the intention of painting them until the capital penalty was abolished or she had made 1,000 plates, whichever happened first. Green's work, however, is not simply about food but also about its profound significance in our shared existence. Food is a measure of time here, whether it's time spent unfairly incarcerated, with family at the dinner table, or making basic yet free decisions that many take for granted. As much as it is both, food is a timeless symbol of pleasure and sustenance, and its presence here serves as a reminder of its absence behind bars.

    The exhibition "Thank God I'm Home: First Meal" is an ongoing painting series that began in 2018 and explored themes of collective memory, loss, and social justice, all of which are central to Julie Green's work. The paintings in the series portray the first meals eaten by falsely convicted people after they are released from jail; each painting conveys a tale about each inmate and their last meal. Green's First Meals appear at first glance to be patchwork flags stitched together with various fabrics, 24k gold, found samplers, turmeric-dyed silk, and more, all sewn onto Tyvek, that hardy synthetic material used to wrap buildings under construction.

    In "Thank God I'm home," Julie painted a corned beef sandwich, Marcel Brown's meal after he was released. This work stood out to me because, thank god, I'm home was the comment marcel brown made to Julie green makes you think about all the incarcerated people who won't ever be able to ever say does words again. Marcel brown was a teenager convicted of a murder he did not commit based on uncounseled and coerced false statements made during 34 hours of police interrogation. He was wrongfully accused of murder, and ten years later, he was released. Brown is a perfect example of how the justice system is wrongful and unfair; incarcerating innocent people should have consequences. A quote from the reading "The Last Supper:" Julie Green's Plates about Death Row" that stood out to me was "One convict requested a birthday cake, and Green notes on the plate that the convict had never had a birthday cake before." This shows how sad life inside prison is; imagine not going home and celebrating your birthday with a cake. Many inmates are never released and don't experience the small things in life.

    Another piece that stood out to me was "At Home With Family". The beautiful painting shows a family enjoying a meal together; this perfectly illustrates how important being with family is; your life can suddenly change, and you'll never know when you will be able to be with the people you love again. This painting is about Robert Hill and his family eating a meal together after being released from prison. This painting shows how incarnation impacts many people who can't visit their homes, missing out on the many things that other people are allowed to do on a daily basis, as some who are unfairly imprisoned only desire the opportunity to live their lives normally. This draws attention to the fact that the justice system is severely dysfunctional. The justice system breaks up families while in prison, and they cannot experience things with their family, watch their children grow, or even spend time with them. 

    Green's work effectively depicts simple things that exonerees miss while incarcerated, such as being in the presence of family and having a meal that is better than what they have been served in previous years with people who care about them. In the YouTube video "The Last Supper," Green states, "I wanted to make something that brought the viewer in that had a degree of beauty." Her intentions were to make something that was beautiful to the viewer but also had a deeper meaning. Julie Green brings awareness to how inmates are deprived of the small things in life, and many are given the death penalty.

Final Project

Poor people deserve to live

For my final project, I decided to talk about poor people and make a video showing how these people live  (Low-income economy) they have all rights to live, as we know in every country there are a lot of people who live in slums and homes that cannot be lived in because of the country's economy or because they were born in places like this. I will flashback and talk about my country which is Egypt, as we know I traveled to Egypt for something, but when I came, I saw many poor people who can not even buy food and resorted to taking money from people so that they can eat and drink. However, I have searched a lot because of the lack of comfort, food, and drinks. They said from the country's economy and prices.

Comparing to "black lives matter" but this call poor lives matter. In the article black lives matter the black people were oppressed by the whites and the whole country but in the other hand the poor people not have the right to chose anything. When I got to Egypt I saw a lot of slums and people who can't even eat, drink or do anything. The economy in Egypt justifies the poor people and just lives for rich people. 

There is no justice

1. an increase in inflation has led to an increase in food prices.

2. widespread inequality caused by government corruption. (like the government not giving the poor people the right to choose).

3. a lack of employment opportunities.

4. an inadequate education system.

The first problem is the increase in food prices how the people will live in a community like this not even the poor people also, the average people this because of opportunity in Egypt to have a good job with good money you have to be an actor or singer or something like this but poor citizen you have to work 24 hours to have 1500 pound per month this reminds me of the black people who do not have an opportunity to live like other.

Some percentage of high prices

  From my standpoint living in a country with a weak economy, is not the best way to live. According to “A Third of Population Lives in Poverty”, One in three Egyptians is living in poverty, the official statistics agency reported the report said 32.5% of Egyptians lived below the poverty line in 2018, up from 27.8% in 2015 and 16.7% in 2021. It said that 6.2% of Egyptians live in extreme poverty. 

In addition, Food becomes higher than last summer As prices increase, buyers are skimping: regulars who used to buy a kilogram of fruit are now content with half. He keeps the lights off between shoppers to save a few pounds.  There are also no lights on the butcher next door, who estimates that revenues have decreased by 20%. The country should make a good economy for all people, not only the rich everything that gets expensive and the poor could not even eat or but clothes. However as I read and did visit a lot of slums places I learned that they only have money for one day and also, the economy did not give them the right to live.

Finally, I decided to make a costume that resembles the clothes of  the poor, and this made from the cover of the pillow, Fabric, and red color with flower. I tried this costume on my little sister in solidarity with every Egyptian citizen who does not have the money to buy clothes. However I did like the article" Cottage Industry", by the artist J. Morgan Puett she produced a participatory installation that references the textile history of the Mass MoCA and her work with made of interconnected threads of ideas, each morphing into another in the form of research, clothing, dwellings, environments, installation. My design is also made from fabric and to present the low income economy. Also, I did some extra thing on her face to convey the idea into reality. Here is the custom.

Picture to support low income people

Resources

https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2019/08/08/egypt-is-reforming-its-economy-but-poverty-is-rising

https://www.voanews.com/a/middle-east_egypt-third-population-lives-poverty/6172941.html

https://borgenproject.org/tag/poverty-in-egypt/

Video Description

Hello, everyone. Today, I'm going to talk about the low-income economy, where most poor people live. After doing a lot of research, I realized that 90% of the people couldn't live in a community that got higher and higher every second and not every day, which means that people who don't have money can't even eat, or drink, or buys clothes. I also interviewed people, but I didn't record all of our conversations. Watch this video to see some high prices and people. As a way to show solidarity with poor people, I did a fashion show with a cut dress.

Final project- mental health awareness

​ For my final intervention project I decided to do it on Mental Health awareness. I decided to go with this project because I wanted to let those know who are struggling that they aren’t alone. In my personal opinion I feel like mental health awareness is such a big topic to discuss. I feel like many people don’t see it as a big issue when in reality it is. Many individuals everyday are struggling with it even though they don’t talk about it. I feel as a society if we talked about it more in schools and everywhere. People wouldn’t feel so alone they would feel as if they could get help. I also created this poster and put it as my profile picture on Instagram. I wanted to do this because I wanted to show that no matter what even if we don’t personally know each other in real life, they still matter. Especially since it is May, which is known to be mental health awareness month. I want people to become more aware of this issue. 

In my personal experience dealing with anxiety it isn’t easy, I have some days that are extremely hard but I always push through. I realized that I wasn’t the only one struggling with mental health. I had my grandma and my best friend who struggles with mental health on a daily basis. It made me want to understand them more and get upset that others judge them for it, when it’s out of their control. Which is a common misconception with society overall. I have also seen celebrity Selena Gomez that has helped me in this project we’re she’s constantly talking about mental health in her Instagram posts and sharing how she deals with it. I find it shocking 

that such a celebrity with her platform is able to discuss her struggles. You can really tell how genuine she is when she speaks about it. The quote that helped me with this project is the book by Kimberly Drew she states “ I knew the power of representation and tried to leverage the image in a way that felt authentic.” I found this quote interesting because people’s identity is important and seeing others be proud of who they are. Another quote I found helpful by Kimberly Drew she states “we don’t have to be at the end of our careers to uplift others; we must uplift one another along the way if we are to survive.” I feel like this quote really in some way can incorporate it into mental illness because as a society if we don’t help those we are mentally struggling then we aren’t doing enough. We need to help one another, it might not be you who are struggling but it could be someone you know who is or you might not even know because they are too afraid to speak up. For personal reasons my friend didn’t feel comfortable enough to talk on camera. He wasn’t comfortable enough to say specifically what he struggles with and didn’t want his name out there. So we decided to do voice memos instead where he talks about his life and his condition. I decided to create a YouTube video where there are subtitles and you can hear and listen to what the questions are and the answers to them. I want people to see this video and feel like it’s okay that they aren’t alone. That they can ask for help and not feel ashamed for it. I put the link in my Instagram bio so people could watch the video and give feedback. 

Interview link: 

https://youtu.be/4B5qrLfuXOg

Work sites: https://ymhproject.org/

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/395224

https://www.womenshealth.gov/blog/mental-health-stigma

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcast-interviews

FINAL PROJECT-KRYSTI ALEJANDRO: YOU DESERVE RESPECT

     

COPY AND PASTE THE LINK TO VIEW DATA FROM THE SURVEY

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1beXLKJPxsV3i6VEL_51jqzJdEtyd5J1-w-LMgjHMazo/edit?usp=sharing

A quick disclaimer before jumping into my project, I couldn't make a video for my project

because I ran out of storage on my phone, but the text below is everything I would've said

in my video. Please enjoy.

Hi, my name is Krysti Alejandro and every day is a challenge for me. I strive to be perfect, I want everything to go as planned, and when it doesn’t I completely crack under the pressure. The act of being perfect has spilled over into every aspect of my life, my soccer career, my work life, my love life, everything, so much so that I feel like I can’t breathe. This feeling has only gotten worse as I have gotten older…maybe because I feel like I’m running out of time or the fact that I am so used to moving at a million miles a minute that when there’s a slow pace in my life I feel as though something is wrong. I ruin everything good in my life, whether it was on the field or with the guy I’ve been talking to for 5 months. I just can’t seem to let things happen the way they should. I want to micromanage, I need to be in charge, if I feel like I have no grasp on anything I start to drown (and the irony to that is that I know how to swim). But this is what mental health struggles look like in me, I need to know the answer even if there’s no answer to know. And that’s why I love math. In math, there’s only ever one right answer, it makes things so easy and simple and helps me be able to catch my breath. So when things start to not make sense for me, I go back to math. 

So let’s chat numbers. I did a survey on my social media to see if anyone felt the way I did, but I catered to my athletic side. This was because I was known for having “outbursts” on the field. I would stomp my feet, pull my jersey out of frustration, and sometimes it would become so overwhelming I would break down completely. I have been kicked out of practices and games, suspended for multiple games in my career, I have had my dreams ripped from my hands, and yet I never wanted to quit until last fall. The first question I asked was ‘has your sport ever caused you to feel sad or depressed?” 77% percent of the people who participated said that at one point or another their sport has caused them to feel down on themselves. According to one article, I read it stated, “33% of all college students experience significant symptoms of depression, anxiety, or other mental health conditions. Among that group, 30% seek help. But of college athletes with mental health conditions, only 10% do.”  Which led me to another question I asked, ‘Do you have outlets to talk about your mental health?’ in which 80% of the people who responded yes they do have outlets but when I asked my follow up question, ‘Do you find it hard to talk about your mental health struggles?’ which almost everyone who answered that they do have people to talk about their struggles with choosing not to because they don’t want to feel like a burden. "Mental illness is associated with weakness." A ted talker said during her speech, and I think that’s why people don’t say anything about how they feel, they don’t want to be seen as weak. Showing your feelings and if they aren’t happy feelings makes people feel weak and powerless. And those who don’t care about showing weakness and seek help from coaches or teammates get told to ‘toughen up,’ and then get brushed aside. 

So after this experience, I can say I learned a lot about the athletes I follow on Instagram and learned more about myself. I sometimes feel alone cause I never met anyone like me, and it makes making relationships with people extremely hard, plus the fact that I wake up every day in a state of panic and can never know calmness. But seeing some people feel how I feel but feel that they can’t express themselves as much as I did, makes me sad for them but gives me a sense of comfort that I’m not alone. I hope others can feel less alone and break the stigma of mental health awareness, student-athletes need help, before there are none left to play.

Works Cited

“Athletes and Mental Health: The Hidden Opponent | Victoria Garrick | TEDxUSC.” YouTube, 2 June 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdk7pLpbIls. Accessed 27 April 2022.

Kuik, Robin, and Suzanne Potts. “Mental Health and Athletes.” Athletes for Hope, https://www.athletesforhope.org/2019/05/mental-health-and-athletes/. Accessed 27

April 2022.