Sarah Spomer Project (Eyewear)

White (black). Female (male). Gay (straight). Artist (mathematician). Millennial (Boomer). Democrat (Republican). Other/none of the above. These are all labels we use to define ourselves and those around us. I’ve wanted to create this mask piece for many years. The goal of this piece is to question the point at which the labels we (and society) place on ourselves cross the line from helpful to detrimental. At their best, labels can help someone come to terms with an identity, claim a place in a social group, discover and pursue new directions, and help forge new connections and understanding. At their worst, they divide, belittle, dehumanize, and blind us. And at their core, what they are is a way to make sense of and come to terms with our differences and our natural inclination to group up based on these differences. Humanity has struggled with, and continues to struggle with, living peacefully with these divides, and it really seems to come down to not physical differences as much as the cultural/religious/political oppositions they represent. Our deep discussions over Sentipensante Pedagogy really got me back to considering these issues, and rekindled my desire to create this mask. 

I did a lot of experimenting to reach this point. A lot of tags, including those with specific colors/symbols and the words themselves, were tossed aside in favor of the more ambiguous, blank look. The repetition and knitting echoes the primary features of my thesis body. The labels are Wal-Mart hangtags that I’ve colored with Copic markers in shades and tones associated with various important cultural identities. The overarching colors, peach and pink, represent my own identities. I don't have a solid clasp, but I would like to create a mechanism that incorporates a padlock. I also might add some dangling tags, as they looked really neat in production before I tied them tight on the knit armature. Rob likes the piece and thinks I should keep playing with it and add it to my thesis portfolio. 

The mask both reveals and obscures the identity of the wearer, both shelters them from the pain of discrimination and hides new perspectives important to growth. How far should we let labels influence us in our relationships, with others and ourselves? What role should we let them play in our daily lives? Trying to find my own place with my own labels, and both my majority and my minority statuses, has taken me on an intense emotional and political journey. After fifteen years, the conclusion I’ve come to is this: if there is a difficult issue with no perfect answers, I’m not sure one SHOULD be completely satisfied in their opinions. Someone with a strong, confident response to a moral dilemma is probably wrong. We should all seek to hear out each other’s perspectives and experiences, and try to bridge gaps. This is a very important part of education, and I hope that it is how we finally address the hyper-partisanship in this country, as well.