Final Project (statue and song) - Maya

Final Project: 

For my final project I made a small sculpture and an altar. The sculpture is an unidentified wooden figurine of an African figure, tied around a Catholic candle, in emulation of the crucifixion of jesus. This piece is supposed to represent the intersections of my religious and ethnic identity. My mother is Tooro from Western Uganda, and is a part of a tribe that is historically animist. Her people were colonized first by islamic civilizational missions, then catholic missionaries. So the catholic part of my identity actually comes from my black mother, even though it is something thematically and socially associated with my white ancestry through my dad. I placed this figure at the top of an altar in my room. It is not an attempt to glorify either aspect of the 2 piece sculpture, but just to acknowledge that the mental frameworks and social relations that led to my existence and the positions from which I started in experiencing the world are complex. Whatever my value system or sense of spirituality in the future, I need to be aware of who I am and where it is I come from.

I also wrote a small song about my experience living on stolen land, coming from stolen land.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dqyRASwKdKoJ4CAeJs_X82ezL23WodaJ/view?usp=sharing


lyrics:

I ran too far from my hometown
can't go back now
followed you so far can't get out
need to somehow

where will I go
It pushed me out

can't tell what I want anymore
can't be too sure
stolen land that I'm livin on
like where I come from