Against

Eunyoung Yoo

GENRE OF ARTWORK: Décollage

Décollage, in art, is the opposite of collage; instead of an image being built up of all or parts of existing images, it is created by cutting, tearing away or otherwise removing, pieces of an original image.

BACKGROUND MOTIVE:

Stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims have been presented in various forms by the mass media in the many cultures, notably American culture. Stereotypical representations of Arabs are often manifested in a society's media, literature, theater and other creative expressions. These representations, which have been historically and predominantly negative, have adversely affected perceptions of non-Arabs and non-Muslims. By revealing hidden biased ideas and prejudiced feelings or emotions which are widespread in other cultures via the most common communication tools - newspapers and magazines - I would like to deliver the message of need for breaking from a piecemeal approach to dealing with the Arab .

Western medias tend to include the disparagement and underestimation or mirror the biased western values about the Arab world, therefore, we have to make substantial efforts to keep a balanced perspective.

The artist who inspired me most is Raymond Hains: French artist born in Saint-Brieuc (Côtes-d'Armor) on November 9, 1926. He died in Paris on October 28, 2005. Raymond Hains studied at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Rennes before coming to Paris to present his first exhibition of “hypnagogic” photographs and starting a body of work with torn posters from the streets. In 1960, he signed, along with Arman, Dufrêne, Klein, Tinguely, Villeglé and Pierre Restany, the Manifesto of New Realism. However, he soon becomes distanced himself from the movement to develop his own line of research through the tools of language, analogy, chance and coincidence, revealing the hidden connections between these disparate elements.