Intro Post 1- Iris G.

Self Introduction

Hello, my name is Iris Ivilisse Garcia. 

I use she/they pronouns.

I'm an ART THERAPY Major and a Junior. 

I transferred here in the Fall, so this is my second semester here at NJCU (soon to be Kean Jersey City)

I'm an openly queer person of color who is of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent. 

I'm an artist and I use my drawings and paintings to help process and externalize my emotions, thoughts, and experiences.

I'm my own audience, as all the art I make is primarily for myself and my needs, but I do enjoy sharing my art with others and hearing how it makes them feel or how they relate to it.

I strongly advocate for mental health awareness and to fight against the stigma.

I'm familiar with being the patient (Bipolar II Disorder), 

but I'm learning how to be the clinician (Art Therapist).

 My Art

Political Artist: Teresa Margolles

Teresa Margolles, Portrait, 2025

735 photographs of individuals from the trans+ community from Mexico and the United Kingdom

    Teresa Margolles is a Mexican artist and former mortician. Her work focuses on mortality, human rights, the normalization of violence, and the neglect and erasure of victims and their bodies. She often uses biological materials in her art, using her experience and knowledge of being a mortician in her creative process. She uses water used to wash cadavers, the blood and clothes of the dead, and even using the literal remains of the abandoned corpses in her art to bring awareness to how these people were killed and failed by their government and society. 

    Margolles is very special to me because she uses her art to try and remind us of death and the erased identities of so many unclaimed bodies. She tries hard not to let them be forgotten, to remind us that these were living people like you and me, and that they deserve to be seen, even if it's post-mortem. I also respect her strength to be able to use such intense materials and be in so much contact with the dead. 

    Some people don't enjoy Margolles' art, as it can be very shocking and maybe cross the line for them, but her art isn't meant to be enjoyed, it's meant to show and communicate a very tragic and powerful message about how we devalue the lives of people from vulnerable and marginalized communities and normalize their suffering.

H.W. - 2 Quotes from readings and responses 01/27

Understanding Patriarchy by bell hooks

It was clear to us that our behavior had to follow a predetermined, gendered script. We both learned the word "patriarchy" in our adult life, when we learned that the script that had determined what we should be, the identities we should make, was based on patriarchal values and beliefs about gender.

I enjoyed reading this as it reminds me about how gender is a social construct. The "idea" of what makes a man or a woman and a boy or girl is constructed by our society, culture, and religion and typically goes way beyond reproductive organs and chromosomes. The concept of gender is fluid and changes over time.

This essay comes from an older feminist perspective that has not taken into account the experiences or existence of trans, intersex, or genderqueer people; however we believe it still offers a useful understanding of patriarchy

As a genderfluid person, I appreciated this sentence. bell hooks' words do align with the feelings of many trans and gender diverse people, and reaffirms my belief that feminism is for everyone and should not be trans exclusionary. (TERFS/ "gender critical")

What Memes Owe to Art History

Wershler argues that memes should be understood as the digital descendants of artists such as Man Ray, Walker Evans, and Andy Warhol—all vanguards whose practices largely concerned informational and social disruptions.

I can see many snobby high brow artists cringing at the comparison between memes and art by big names like Man Ray, Walker Evans, and Andy Warhol. Except, when you look up the art these men made, especially Warhol, its easy to see the similarities to memes. These guys were the trolls of the Art World back in their day. Looking back at the Pop Art Movement, Surrealism, or dadaism, I also believe that memes are just descendants or even the digital evolution of these movements.

“Narratives matter.…Pictures don’t speak for themselves,” he said, arguing that memes are not just jokes, but rather have the potential to be more sinister than what meets the eye. “Memes aren’t an innocent process—they carry serious political weight, and not always of the activist variety,” Wershler said, citing the website 4chan’s politics board and other alt-right cyber-communes where hate speech has festered in the forms of memes.

It's important to be aware of this. Memes seem small and innocent, like they can't do much damage, but because they're so easy to make, and are shared and posted everywhere and anywhere all the time, it can affect our perception of reality. When it comes to activism for human rights and social justice, this is great, but if the meme is filled with misinformation and hate speech, it now becomes dangerous propaganda polluting people's social medias and feeding them a reality that may not even be true. 

Memes Are Our Generation's Protest Art | VICE

“The ability for the meme to empower and push back can be really powerful. They’re definitely sites of resistance against perceptions of abuse of power. They spread so quickly and evolve and transform, and it’s hard to shut them down in the way other forms of communicative protest can be silenced.”

I agree that memes can be used as a way to protest and ridicule political figures, what I sometimes fear though is by memes being so easy and fast dying, they may not hold the same power as actually going out and protesting with signs and chants. Memes and digital protests are also easy to preform without actually committing to the cause or understanding the weight of what they're protesting. The message may also not seem as powerful or translate well between generations. With that being said, i do acknowledge the power of memes to communicate, influence, and even bring people together, I also enjoy how accessible it is.

Then there is the category referred to as “activist memes,” which includes those like Permit Patty and BBQ Becky, nicknames that became shorthand for white people calling the police on black people for merely living their lives. These weren’t just jokes, but a way to name and call attention to a kind of racism that was rarely talked about.

Memes are really good for this. When it comes to situations like these that may not be talked about because they seem so "trivial" or perhaps people have a hard time explaining the problem in these types of situations. Memes provide a quick and visual format that gives the viewer a "POV" or point of view of the situation, either in it or watching it, and that can actually bring other people closer to understanding how problematic a situation like this is, how common it is, and bring awareness to it. The meme may come off as a joke, but it gets people talking and so now it also becomes recognizable when we see it on the news, on social media, or even in real life.