Created in the education studios at the Philadelphia Museum of Art during the first week of the Summer Film Program the wallpaper artworks predominantly draw themes from the art and artifacts of three distinct regional cultures: India, Latin America, and China. Our challenge was to initiate a historical dialogue between our art and great cultures that may or may not be our own. The multiple tracings and drawings loosely fit within a Victorian era European wallpaper template design. This method helped us visualize the historic tendency of our predecessors to present images of distant and distinct cultures through Western or Eurocentric lenses. In our attempt to recognize, but not capitulate to this tendency, we inserted drawings that represent our own distinct cultures in order to establish our own unique cultural lens. Basketball players, Puerto Rican and Dominican flags, water bottles, robot figures, and even a portraits of the Hip Hop artist Lauren Hill compliment and contrast with drawings from India, Latin America, and China. The designs attempt to make sense of our unique interpretation of art and artifacts of the past. The high ambition of the project was to use the unique relationship we have with our own culture, the relationship we have with each other, and the benefits that we gain from a dialogue with the art of three distinct cultures to create an exciting new beauty.
