The Story of an Art Historian

I just applied for a scholarship in which I had to write about why I chose study art history. I thought I would share my response...

During my sophomore year of high school, like many other students, I felt lost. The decision loomed to choose a career path. As an elective, I chose to take an AP Art History course. My teacher, Miss Parenti, was so incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about what she taught that it inspired me to find that passion, and thus I hoped I could spend my life as passionate about my career as her. Unfortunately, I struggled through the first part of the course, and I felt defeated.

Half way through the semester, we looked at Giotto’s  “Lamentation.” Everything I had been struggling with all along finally clicked. I knew in that moment that I wanted to learn everything I could about art history, so I could share with other students the same passion that Miss Parenti shared with me.

Thus, I chose to go to the University of Iowa to study art history. However, I realized during my studies that being an art historian was more about your service to the community than it was about calling yourself a doctor upon attaining a PhD or about knowing everything. Like my fellow undergraduates, I began pondering what field of art history I wanted to study further in graduate school. As I fell in love with modern and contemporary art, I had an epiphany.

One day, I was at the Art Institute of Chicago with my mom. As we wandered, we walked into Hito Steyerl’s video instillation, “In Free Fall.” As my mother and I watched, we were both reduced to tears as we watched the video in which two flight attendants with stone cold expressions went through the motions of explaining the safety procedures of an emergency exit in flight. Their beautifully choreographed motions seemed like a dance, juxtaposed with a background in which an airplane fell toward a rotating earth, mimicked by the rotation of the CD. All of this served as a metaphor for 9/11 with its devastation, destruction, and downfall.

In that moment, I knew that as an art historian, I wanted to study more of Hito Steyerl. I want to go beyond her work to use it as a base to study contemporary Middle Eastern art, as it fluctuates into the Western contemporary art world. My research can be a voice that speaks about the cultural conflict plaguing the US and the Middle East for years. Art and art historians can be the path for discourse begins of how to end a plague of violence and conflict.

My undergraduate degree in art history from the University of Iowa helped me to find my passions, and it will continue to give me a strong base to leave, explore, and travel to research an idea that will serve the world in conflict.

On Breaking & Healing

Recently, I had a conversation with someone quite dear to me. As we talked, we began exchanging stories. We’re not talking fluffy bar stories. We’re talking deep, impactful, and truthful. I could listen to him talk and listen to his stories for days, but there was one thought that got me.

I wish I could write down the exact words, but it was to the effect of: In that moment, I suddenly understood how much power a human being could have to break another person, and in that moment, I saw her break.

And it made me stop and think.

Sometimes, you consider relationships and you realize people impact each other. You realize that you come to assimilate to each other. You learn to like the same music, movies, foods, develop the same habits and routines, and so on. Sometimes this can go to the not as healthy extent of things in which things are forced and compliance is required in hopes of staying. Falsely, compliance implies that change could occur and that things could get better.

But then there’s a new point. A point in which two people become one until they break. It’s that tragic point when one person walks away and says, “No, I don’t love you anymore.” And it is in that moment that one human can break another human.

It is in that moment that we understand the power that we have. It is in that moment that we begin hoping for something passionate and something unrequited to fix what has been shattered into a million pieces.

It is also in that moment that you realize that as much as you can break someone, you can also fix the broken in someone else.

From being broken, we change. We go from optimism to despair, romance to cynic, whole to a part, found to wandering, and everything in between. From being broken, we find a new way to become whole.

It’s a beautiful concept, knowing that something once so broken can become new again. It’s an equally powerful and trusting concept as well.

It is from sharing how we are all broken that we heal. It is from being open and vulnerable that we come back together. It is from letting down the guards and walls and boundaries that we cling to that we heal. It is from trust and chance that we heal. It is from believing in something greater that we heal.

It is from believing that you are not doomed to your life of brokenness and despair and trusting yourself to someone dear to you that you heal, and you find that you are not as  broken as you may believe.

Brokenness is a brief moment on a path of change, and on a journey toward happiness, not a characteristic that defines you and commands you.

“Aren’t we all unfinished? Don’t we all need editing? Aren’t we al praying for someone to read us and say we make sense?” – Rudy Francisco