I write to my blog in anxiety: ”Do I design socially just and socially conscious way or is my design colonialist in nature? Do I merely exploit the people and cultures I am portraying in order to gain from them?”
Suffocated by my own constant criticism and avoidance of the least racial bias I decide to be less concerned about it and to postpone the analysis to a later stage.
I try a collage technique and cut out interesting images from magazines combining them to evoke new associations. The most interesting results I get by combining a photo of a wooden tribal mask and a cake topper groom. I sketch the combination and get an image that brings to mind black male servants or jazz musicians. (Fig. 20.)
Figure 20: Sketch of cake topper figure wearing a mask.
Next I combine the same mask with a photo of a white woman playing with children. When I place the mask on her face she resembles the mammy stereotype of black female house help. It brings to mind my own experiences with having a housegirl, a kind of house help. I want to explore this theme further. (Fig. 21.)
Figure 21: Sketch of a woman wearing a mask.
ILLUSTRATING THE OTHER 