Artist Talk: Yahaddy Njie's SMP

Today I went to see Yahaddy Njie's SMP called "Translating Language". I have to say that I was amazed by how wonderful her project was. Overall, I think that her project was about being unfamiliar, coming into a new country, and finding your identity.

Something that stood out the most for me was before she started her presentation she spoke to her audience in her native language. I think that set the tone for the rest of the project. Yahaddy then began to talk about her experience coming from Africa to America four years ago, to get an eduacation at SMCM. She talked about how she felt that she did not have a identity when she moved here and she expressed how she felt lost in a new place. Yahaddy's art work expressed her feelings about finding her identity and how art has helped her to be able to free herself from these feelings.

Yahaddy spoke about many artists who have inspired her to create the images for her SMP but when she was talking about Picasso, I felt that she was most passionate. Picasso's images are abstract and can often be confusing to a viewer but Yahaddy believed that Picasso is showing that each painting has more than one meaning and it's ok to have such. She identified with Picasso and cubism in her own art work. I was struck by Yahaddy's explaination of her frustration when Picasso was creating distorted images of the African mask. She felt that Picasso was doing it injustice until she ralized that Picasso was just trying to escape the norm and was trying to change the view of what traditional art it. I think that Yahaddy's distorted images came across well. She wanted her audience to go through a process of construction, deconstruction and reconstuction and her digital images took me through that process. She talked about how she does not reveal much of herslef to many people because her culture is very private but her art work allowed her to express these feelings without completely outing herself.

I enjoyed listening to Yahaddy talk about how black and white are actual colors and how most people do not idnetify with them being colors. She talked about how black and white are views of two different worlds. One good and one bad. I never though of black and white in that way before because I did not think that they were colors at first either but, Yahaddy changed my view of that.

Lastly, I enjoyed hearing Yahaddy talk about how she writes poems at the end of her art work. She said that she never views her work as finished but writing poems at the end of her work gives her a sense of what she has just accomplished and gives her a feeling of understanding what she has just created. I think that it was great how she ended her presentation the same way she started by talking in her native language. I think that Yahaddy did an amazing job and I'm sure that all of her hard work will not be forgotten.