What is identity? That’s the question that my class and I have been trying to figure out for the last three weeks, in this blog post I am going to be sharing what we have learned so far and about how each identity makes each person different and unique. This will most likely be a shorter blog post but I hope you will enjoy it none the less.
At first it was tough for us to find one definition, but in the end the one that my group settled on was “Identity is how people and places recognize important things about themselves that make the unique. It is how they separate themselves from others using important aspects of their culture, ideas, language”. In short identity is all the little things you do that make you who you are.
We then looked through the dictionary to check to see how close we were to the one that the world has decided on in the English language. Theirs was “The qualities, personalities and beliefs that make up a person or group”. When comparing the two we can see that both contain the same part about personal qualities that set us apart from one another, however the dictionary version we found did not include the fact that things like countries have identities based on the people who live there. We found that interesting.
We learned that identity is something very different from person to person, for example some people want to change parts about their identity ( hair, clothes, etc) while other would do anything except that. We also learned that some people have a very strong sense of who they are and what their identity is and what it means to them, where as other are still figuring it out.
To show parts of our individual identities, we all created a bio-poem, it was a poem made up of personal aspects of our life that make up who we are. In mine I have put in things about where I live, what I love to do, and also what I hope to do in the future, I though this was somewhat of a tough assignment even though I know it shouldn’t really have been. For me it was tough to think about who I was at first, but it cam easier as I heard examples from other and my teachers. In my final draft I felt I had shown all important parts of my identity.
What is my identity, I have though about that way more since the start of this project, and because of that I have been able to create art that I think better describes who I am. With that I will present my latest piece that I have created for class, I will also explain each piece of it and how it describes my identity.
As you can see it is a GIF that shows multiple symbols coming out for a main image. Each on of those little symbols is something important to me that I think is an important piece of my identity. If I was to explain every single thing that is important to my identity then the GIF would be incredibly cramped, so I only added the ones that are extremely important, or ones that cover multiple subjects in one. As shown in the GIF most of the symbols are related to outdoors of sports because they play a huge role in my life, not only for fitness, but also because of the community created by the sports.
In the main image we see myself with a ocean view blended into the face. This shows a very important part of my identity, where I live. I took that photo at a local beach that my family often visit, so it shows an important part of who I am. The second part of that photo is that it represents the adventure in me. I enjoy constantly adventuring all around looking for different locations I haven’t visited before. Personally I enjoy doing things like this because I like to know exactly what’s around me at all times, I don’t know why it’s just something that reassures me, so I go on all sorts of hikes, walks, and anything in between to find new places.
Overall I think because of this topic I have learned more about who I am and how I can express that in my writing, art, and anything in between. I will be posting more and more on this topic later I think so be expecting even better work…. hopefully.
That’s all for now.