Art Exchange with Schools in Finland and Malaysia /The Identity Project/Fall 2020 & Spring 2021

This fall & spring Sonoma Academy students worked on the Identity project with the Puropelto School in Turku, Finland and the Mont Kiara International School in Malaysia and got to meet the students and ask one another questions about the project and life in the US, Finland and Malaysia. For our first meeting with the Mont Kiara School, students wanted to know who they would vote for in presidential election if they were allowed to vote. Our students asked the students in Malaysia about their favorite food. We also had a question asked about pet cats since so many of us have been spending more time with our pets during this pandemic.

Sonoma Academy, Santa Rosa, California, USA

Sophia

For my project I wanted to represent the more blithe, lighthearted, side of me and the more serious, deep, side of me in one homogenous piece. Though it may look like the left side of my piece is meant to be ominous and morbid, that was not my intention. I meant it to convey the side of me that is more serious, thoughtful, and aware, as well as to convey some of my hidden desires and insecurities. I decided to incorporate a skeleton as the other half of my face due to my interest in the medical field. I used a simple micron pen with lots of tiny crosshatches to give the skeleton a more 3-dimensional look. Also, I used a picture of a real skeleton for reference, making sure I made my skeleton look accurate and realistic, further demonstrating my interest in the medical field. My interest in the medical field stems from my family. My father and my grandfather are both doctors, and my mom was a nurse. Ever since I was little, I’ve been surrounded by the idea of becoming a doctor. When I was younger it never used to appeal to me, I had my heart set on becoming an artist. However, recently the idea of being able to help people and do something good with my life has become much more enticing. I’ve always wanted to make an impact on the world, but lately I have realized that I do not need to do that to be respected. Sometimes, making an impact on regular, everyday people, without worldly recognition for your accomplishments is far more admirable. 

The next aspect of my piece that symbolizes something is the snake coming out of the skull. The snake is meant to convey my tendency to overthink as well as my insecurities. Throughout my life, there have always been things to overthink about, whether it’s something vital like my future, or something more temporary like a math test. I have also always had things that I am insecure about. Sometimes it feels as though my thoughts and insecurities are trying to strangle me, hence the giant red snake emerging from my head. For the background of the left side, I created a black and white collage of places and objects from around the world, displaying my love for travel and discovery. Traveling has always been an immense joy to me, for I love experiencing new cultures and scenery. I have been to many foreign places, but I would love to travel to more. All these components make up my inner self, something that people do not see at first.

 For the right side of my piece, I wanted to include more color and liveliness. I also wanted it to contrast the left side without being too dramatic. I decided to use watercolor to show the more soft and light side of me, while also being able to capture the vibrant colors that represent me. The reds, oranges, and yellows represent my vivacity and happiness, the words my friends and family used to describe me as. After I watercolored my paper, I decided to cut out pieces of it to glue on my piece to give it a fragmented look. The little cartoony designs on the watercolor of bugs, flowers, and suns, represent my outer happiness and lightheartedness. They remind me of fun and youth, things that I project on the outside. My friends know that I love to be childish and joke around, and I thought these little designs represented that. Overall, this project reflects how others view me, and how I view myself in a delicate balance of symbolism and artistic representation. It includes aspects of my creativity as well as my deeper thoughts. Creating this piece has helped me come to a deeper understanding about how I come off to others and how I want to come off to others, furthermore, it has helped me develop a greater sense of my identity and what makes me Sophia.

Esme

For me this project was a bit of an inner exploration. I had to look inside myself in order to create an accurate representation of me in the form of art. Creating the outer side of the piece was far easier than representing the inner side of me. For the outside I did a collage of old printed text with dried lavender flowers on top of it. The writing in the collage represents the societal norms I feel held down by, and the lavender represents how I’m always trying to grow and learn. I often try to come off as a put together organized person, even when things are chaotic on the inside. The right side of my artwork represents what’s inside. The background represents the chaos, beauty and confusion that are my emotions. The tiger face represents strength and determination. I am always pursuing my goals and chasing my dreams. Tigers have very similar qualities so i often think of them as my spirit animal. The M&M rappers that I used to fill in my shoulders, show that I have a sweet side, even though sometimes it can be hard to find.

Mont Kiara International School, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

My name is Rassam and I'm from Iran. I moved to Malaysia around 2 and half years ago.
The left side of my art piece is what other people see and also it represents my family and culture. First my dog is a big part of my family so I put half of her face on myne. I was planning to put pictures of my family as well but because of quarantine I couldn't do it because i don't have a printer. The writing is called Bani Adam. Bani Adam is a famous poem by Iranian poet Saadi Shirazi. A translation of the first line of the poem was quoted by former U.S. President Barack Obama in a videotaped message to Iranians to mark Nowruz, the Persian New Year, on 20 March 2009.

This is the translation of the poem

"Human beings are members of a whole,

since in their creation they are of one essence.

When the conditions of the time brings a member to pain,

the other members will suffer from discomfort.

You, who are indifferent to the misery of others,

it is not fitting that they should call you a human being."

The pattern around the poem is a famous Persian pattern that was used hundreds of years ago. The right side is what I see. The basketball on my shirt represents my favorite sport. Basketball is my favorite sport and I used to play it a lot. The black outlining on my face represents a puzzle. The puzzle is my future that I have to find. The background for the right side is cartoon faces or memes. The background doesn't really have a meaning but it shows that I love social media.


I would like to start this snippet about myself, by first introducing myself. Hi my name is Kairangi Te Huki but everyone calls me Kai, I’m 15 years old and I’m from the USA and New Zealand. Ever since I was a kid I always loved playing basketball and that has obviously translated into my life now, as I play basketball everyday to become the next Lamelo Ball. In my artwork I tried to convey who I was on an A4 piece of paper, which was nearly impossible, but my finished product really does speak, me. On the left hand side of the piece is what people view me as, my exterior. I chose to wear my schools’ basketball jersey to represent my undying love of wearing the most fashionable sports clothes to any occasion, whether it be my wedding or a basketball game, I can guarantee if I wasn’t forced to wear something else, you would see me show up in a cavaliers shirt, and some basic Nike shorts. Finally on my exterior I chose a plethora of words that described me, I chose these words by thinking about what my friends and family would say about me if they were being honest, and I tried to make it so that, you, the audience would be able to meet me through this A4 piece of paper. Furthermore, my interior side is more complex. Let's get the subject of basketball out of the way before I turn this into a whole autobiography. I chose some pictures of me playing basketball that depict the player I am, a slashing forward. At the bottom of the right hand side you can see various cut up pieces of currency, these are to show how where I have lived, have made me, me. Being a third culture kid does shape how you view things, and it will take pieces of culture from where you have lived, and where you are from originally, to create this weird mélange of a personality. On the background there are more images, these photos are my family, and I would predict, you, would say the same. My dad taught me what determination and competitiveness is, my mom taught me to be empathetic and hard working, and finally my brother taught me how to be respectful and humorous. Finally you may be wondering what is drawn on my face and what my hair is made of. My face is to represent a culture that I belong to, that being Maori culture, and in my culture people tattoo their face which is called “Moko”, to represent how proud they are to be from the culture. Finally I chose to cut up a basketball and glue it as my hair to represent that basketball is always in my mind, and it will forever be glued there. 

Hi, my name is Suh Yun L but everyone calls me Olivia. I’m from Seoul, South Korea and I’m turning 15 this June. Since I was a kid, I was very outgoing...basically an extrovert. I really enjoyed doing outdoor activities and loved making new friends. However, as I got into puberty I started being timid and quiet around people. I also started feeling some kind of feelings that I have never felt before. In addition, I tend to get emotional very easily and the mood swings hit significantly. My whole point of creating this artwork is to share my experiences with the big and small emotions that I felt during puberty. During the process of making this artwork, I have learned various ways to express my feelings through art which significantly helped me let out those dark and caged emotions. 

First of all, the left side is my outer identity. I feel like people around me identify me as a bright and talkative person so I mostly used some bright colors on the right side. I colored the background with a yellow color pencil and drew out some random shapes with different colors of sharpie. I also drew two sunflowers with a sharpie and color pencil. The sunflowers represent my sister and my mom who are my mental stabilisers and my mentors and the random shapes represent my “weird and energetic” personality. I outlined my face features with sharpie and colored them with color pencil. I colored my hair with dark gray sharpie and made those curly shapes because I change my hairstyles very often.

Second but lastly, the right side is my inner identity. For the background, I used dark colors such as black and gray. I drew some gray stripes to represent a cage. My intent was to express my caged and depressing emotion that I feel sometimes (really rare hits once in 2 months). Also, I drew a monster inside the cage in order to express my small anxiety that hits sometimes (also really rare). For my face, I ripped out some pieces from a magazine in order to express my puzzled mind. 

Overall, I’m quite satisfied with my final piece. Even though it is not a high quality work, it allowed me to relieve my stress throughout making this piece.

My name is Sofea and this is my split face illustration. For my outer identity, I drew and glued flowers all around my head to show peace and kindness. These flowers are hibiscus flowers, which are the national flower of Malaysia, which is my ethnicity and nationality. When a person first gets to know me, I’m often seen as very kind or gentle, but there is so much more to that. This can be seen on the other half where I show my inner identity of who I really am. The first aspect I have is a collage. The collage consists of my aesthetics, my interests, actual pictures of me, and what I see of myself. This definitely shows my inner identity as it’s who I really am, and it's based on not what people see me on the outside. As we can see, it consists of sunsets, adventures, film,  and so many more things that I personally enjoy that not everyone will know when they first see me. In my inner identity, for my hair, I decided to use a different medium. I decided on using an old t-shirt. This is so that I am able to choose my own t-shirt, preferably one that means a lot to me so that it’s more personalized. I decided on using a purple t-shirt for the hair because I believe that by changing your hair, you can change so much of yourself. I’ve never dyed my hair before, but when I see people with different colored hair, so much of their personality shows, and I think that is so interesting. My surname when translated means king. And often purple is correlated with power or royalty which represents my family bloodline. It’s so fascinating that just by changing one thing on your outer identity, people will see you as a different person, however your inner identity doesn’t change. The next medium I chose for my inner identity is colored paper. There are so many different choices with colored paper, but I chose red, orange and yellow because all three of them are warm colors. When people get to know me deeply, they realize that I’m a fiery person with so many opinions, and I wouldn’t step back to not have my words spoken out. To separate those colors, I used string because not only does it help separate them, but strings are also a great way to connect things. The strings represent that no matter how much chaos there is in my inner identity, the strings will always be there to connect everything together and make everything complete. The next medium used for this project are words. I wrote words, any words, that I think of when I think of me. There are so many words that could describe me, and I wanted that to be shown in my project, whether they're negative or positive. The last medium used for my project were teabags. These tea bags made my work look vintage, which I admire the look of. They also represent insecurities and imperfections. There is nothing that is perfect in this world and the teabags are here to represent the flaws that I have, and the flaws that the world has.

Zooming with students in Finland

Our students learned that Finnish public schools are renowned for their educational system which resembles what we would call a private school in America. SA students learned that Finnish people eat a lot of rye bread. Many of the questions revolved around life during the pandemic, food and what students do after school. Currenly, Puropelto students are attending class on campus and wearing masks.

Puropelto School, Finland

To see all of the students' work as well as work from previous years, scroll through the slideshow.