Just a few weeks before, my friend asked me for some pictures, art, photos, or whatever...that tells social injustice. His assignment requires him to find an image that can bring out the message on social injustice and write an analysis on it. Something I am quite familiar with (I had a similar assignment in the past), so I started to find stuff on Steemit that might do the job for him...
After sending him a few street art posts that might be useful, he told me that he forgot to mention that the image should be related to something that is important to him...as stated in the assignment guidelines. My mind went blank for a moment considering that the definition of him always revolved around anime and visual novels, and it is not easy to get a related image on the topic that at the same time brings the message of social injustice.
I remember us suggesting that he should just write about how social injustice on visual novels are suppressing its growth (while not even sure if it is a real issue), but he rejected the idea. Anyways, there should still be something for him to write on. Let me think...
...and before I got a better idea, he had one (somehow).
"How about me using one of your drawings?"
"You sure? I don't think I have drawn anything on social injustice...you know, I don't do that kind of stuff."
If you have been following my Steemit blog since the very early days, this image might be look a little familiar. You can even find the exact same image in one of my very early posts. Comes with a poem or something as a story served together with the drawing, ...it does sound as cringy as it seems. Hence, I don't really intend to attach the link in this post... but yes, you may find it yourself by scrolling really deep into my Steemit blog history.
And, if you do find the post, it should be pretty obvious to you that this drawing has close to 0 relationships with the topic of social injustice.
Of course, he chose to use that as his topic picture.
"...I'm not sure how you can throw out a big essay on social injustice from that picture."
"Trust me dude, I know my ways."
Photo by Nikita Kachanovsky on Unsplash
As I was still doubting around he went and wrote a few paragraphs on it. I'm astonished when he showed me his content - by counting in everything he can find in the image with his own interpretation, he managed to argue that the image is about the topic of social injustice and is able to state the significance and the actual issue the image is pointing to - despite it is not really like that when I first made it.
I can't share the points he stated since it's his assignment, but I'm pleasantly surprised by what he did.
Probably this is one of the reasons I love creative work that has little fixed context - the audience is free to interpret and have their own theories to them. For a lot of times people will have widely diverged views on the same piece of work, and it's quite interesting to see the differences then look at the same thing again but from a totally different viewpoint or condition.
I'm wondering if anyone here reading this has a way to interpret my drawing in the context of social injustice (or just about any context you put it into) too. If you managed to, do let me know about your theories and interpretations, I will love to read them. There's no right or wrong in this, so just let your subconsciousness guide you around...eh?
Photo by Martin Penot on Unsplash
Probably that's all for now! Back to a busy life...see you around.
--Lilacse
