Collage: Online Identity vs. Identity IRL

A couple of months ago I attended a two-week summer program at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in Karachi. The program was titled Crossover, and was aimed at students aged 15 and above. (My sister Fatima, who also attended these two courses alongside me and my brother, wrote a descriptive piece about the whole experience which you can check out here.)

One of the assignments in the second week of the course - which was titled Media Crossings, and covered themes connected to social media, filmmaking and new media/post-internet art among others - was this thing which I am posting here. The task was to think about ourselves and our identities; both online as well as in real life, and then to create an art piece that acts as a portal between the two.  Although I don't think the piece I created does that very well (I think what I did made the contrast more obvious instead of bridging the difference), here's the result anyway.

The face on the right is meant to reflect my identity online (the keywords written in it are meant to describe my experience online.) I tried to make the eye larger in proportion and also attempted to make it a focal point (well, that was a pretty unsuccessful attempt I guess) to indicate that my identity online is more of a passive one than an active one. When I'm online, I'm often just passively absorbing or ingesting whatever I come across instead of thinking much about it or making an active contribution to it by speaking about it. The grinning face is meant to show a sense of pleasure that I seem to experience (whether it is fake or real is debatable) when I'm online.

The face on the other hand, on the left side of the picture, is meant to illustrate my real (irl) self. The choice of colours for the two faces was almost instinctive, and I chose yellow for this one because I think it reflects some sort of originality, as well as my own inner nature. The white spaces between the pieces of yellow paper reflect the cracks in my facade, which I think my real personality reveals and were necessary to show here. Also, the open mouth (in contrast with the closed, 'smiling' one on the right) is meant to show that in real life, I have a voice and am not afraid to use it.

Thanks for reading! If you have any feedbacks/observations/critique of any kind, do let me know in the comments below. Also, huge thanks go out to our teachers for this week at Indus Valley, Sir Asad Kamran and Ms. Kulsum Ebrahim! The time I spent with these amazing people and the lessons I learnt from them are unforgettable. Thank you so much for everything
.