TWO: Collage
convey emotion through imagery
Contrasting imagery depicts a stereotypical American homestead (all that's lacking is the picket fence) juxtaposed with a generic shantytown that could exist in countries all over the world. A young boy starving for food and thirsty for water sits in the front yard of the dream home. In this the artist hopes to capture the essence of longing for a young person like one of the four girls who also appear. One of the four is the artist's own daughter and she considers that if she were born in a refugee camp, a strangled village without ample food or water, or a place that has no infrastructure for protection over a young girl, her dreams of living somewhere faraway would be justified. That "faraway" is idealized in pervasive images of The American Dream. Irony appears in relevant excerpts (trailing behind pictures) from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah and in the fact that the artist's daughter wishes she could live in a "faraway" from her native country, perhaps an unconscious defiance of The American Dream.