RACIAL INEQUITY

Medium: Animation; Dragonframe, Clay, Watercolour 

Year: 2021

Description: While redesigning Georgetown’s student experience, I found a common thread of racial inequities in my research. Reflecting on my personal experiences, I decided to map racism through animation. I practised the art of optical illusion by creating flipbooks and making a zoetrope, the oldest motion device. I imported audio to Dragonframe, noting beat changes to match visuals. I chose abstraction to eliminate personal biases, engross the viewers, and push them to think beyond the obvious. I storyboarded themes of Critical Race Theory, the Broken Ladder, and the Power of Togetherness and transitioned through watercolours for consistency.

The beginning frames show watercolours forming an expanding dot representing earth through changing sizes of playdoh between frames. The dot is coloured at 18% grey, undoing racism in photography bias and then starts dividing, alluding to the Critical Race Theory being socially constructed to exploit people of colour. I made this evident by forming an army of white dots, marching towards the brown dots that get intimated. I used playdoh under the brown dot to make it shake and watercolours to depict it bursting into tears. For the following sequence of the Broken Ladder, I made the white dot jump by placing straws underneath to create shadows. I also applied squash and stretch techniques to make it fall realistically. The brown dot turned red with frustration and bled, referencing the George Floyd murder. Finally, I depicted this awakening leading to everyone striving for a better world to form a circle.