Christian Orellana Bauer
Something Brown is an exploration and representation of both the ambiguity and clarity of the word "brown" in reference to one’s skin color through my own family's relationship to immigration, race, and assimilation. Constructing one's racial identity is a particularly complex process in the United States for obvious reasons, namely our history of oppression, imperialism, and our deep roots in the time period of colonization as defining functions of our institutions, culture, and governing systems. Racially marginalized communities (and marginalized communities in general) often find themselves in the odd position of defining their identity in relation to the dominant social group, in this case whiteness. This relationship in the context of racial identity puts the individual on a spectrum in comparison to whiteness based on the various social, economic, regional, and cultural backgrounds that everyone carries with them. This can be a tumultuous and confusing process as there is no guidebook available defining where one falls on this spectrum. The dissonance between the simplicity of a physical trait of an individual (such as brown skin ) and the convoluted nature of the racial construct defined by the white supremacist structure can be overwhelming at times. The name "Something Brown" is negation of this complexity and an expression of the confusion these parameters can cause. These themes are what this work discusses through my experience of continually going through this process of exploring your racial identity. The full piece creates a poem which is read as you view the photographs, this is a selection of photographs from the larger series and as such does not create the full poem. The media of the work is memorabilia (or family photos) transferred as cyanotype prints and photos shot with a Sony a6000 camera.