Examples Of Cultural Self Portraits

Seth Phelps
Cultural Self Portraits
2/7/15
For my cultural self portrait I decided to use the traits and surroundings from the Maori tribe in New Zealand. The Maori tribe has very interesting clothing, hairstyles, and body adornments.
Clothing, adornments and even hairstyles showed a lot about a person’s status, and fine clothes could enhance a person's’ power and or authority. Traditionally, Māori made their clothes and adornments from native plants, and bird and animal skins. There was a great variety of clothing, including many kinds of cloaks. The most special cloaks were worn only by chiefs.
Hairstyles could show someone’s status, or indicate
when someone was in mourning. There is less information about women’s hairstyles, but stories record that chiefly women, or women about to sacrifice themselves, often dressed their hair.
Many if not most high­ranking persons received moko(tattoos), and those who went without them were seen as persons of lower social status
.
Receiving moko constituted an important milestone between childhood and adulthood, and was accompanied by many rites and rituals . Apart from signalling status and rank, another reason for the practice in traditional times was to make a person more attractive to the opposite sex. Men generally received moko on their faces, butts and thighs. Women usually wore moko on their lips and chins. I found this tribe interesting mainly because of the art of the tattoos and how much work and elegance is put into every single piece.

In todays modern culture it is very rare to see people representing their own culture in public unless it is for just one special event. Many people associate the color of a persons skin to their culture and most of the time this leads to racial stereotyping and name calling. Many people

assimilate white people with being rich and successful and sometimes a goody two­shoes. And sometimes more than not, those people who assume these things about a person just based on their color, are wrong. These racial stereotypes affect people's perception of who we are in a
bad way. I too have made assumptions about certain people just based on their outward appearances and most of the time they prove me wrong in the process of getting to know them. Now a days, especially in school, many students and teachers use racial profiling to crack jokes about people and this I believe should not be tolerated. All races and cultures should not be judged and made fun of because, lets face it every culture has an embarrassing ritual or type of clothing and if we just learn to accept people for who they are we will be far better off in this world. Studying the
Maori culture has not given me a more broader perspective of people from different cultures/ tribes mainly because the tribe I chose to study is a very well respected tribe and many people idolize them for their tattoo art, clothing, etc.

I have learned many things about myself during this drawing project. Many things on my face are not closely proportional such as; my eyes, lips, nose, eyebrows, and ears. If I were to do this drawing again something I would do different would be to change the pose I chose in which to draw my self. The face­on pose was very difficult to try and proportionate my facial features and I feel if I were to chose a side angle that it would have been much easier to draw because I would only have to draw half of what I had to during this project.