Dependency | Cracking the Stereotypes | MyPOP

The work attempts to communicate that too often a child’s environmental conditions are translated into the characteristics of the child. The talents, gifts and skills of the child get lost in the depth of family hardships. The use of gradient tones embodies the innocence of a child juxtaposed with the stark horizon that sets to question what resources each child has at birth - one child starting with baggage and the other starting with supplies.

MyPOP (My Print on Poverty) investigates topics of social mobility and reveals the inherent contradictions between the idealized steps to prosperity and the often harsh reality of climbing the soci-economic ladder with limited resources. Going beyond merely exposing the discrepancy between resources and opportunity, the work alludes to the sense of community that families are able to create within grinding conditions of material hardship. By illustrating a labyrinth of social and political structures, the insightful series is a shrill outcry against the stereotypes of the poor and a sobering real-life perspective of moving out of the dysfunctional cycles.

Medium: The paintings are coated with a malleable texture of wax, representing changing circumstances and preservation. The use of distressed collage is integrated for the purpose of storytelling, cross cultural symbolism and to represents obstacles, barriers and erosion of resources.