What is identity? This question sends one spiralling, do we choose our identity? Is it something we are born with, something we create, or a combination? To me identity is our DNA, our ancestral lineage and culture, the bones of who we are. Art allows us to explore our identity and the unjust prejudices faced there, Daniella Zalcman captures this with her project ‘Signs of your Identity’ where she captured survivors of Canadian Indian assimilation boarding schools with double exposed images showing their faces superimposed with imagery relating to their past. This image of Valerie Ewenin and her story struck me, when attending the school at a young age she was forced to abandon her native language and beliefs, leading to her forgetting them entirely, she said “I was brought up believing in the nature ways… speaking Cree… and that was all taken away from me. And then later on I forgot it, too and that was even worse.” A broken window is superimposed over her portrait, covering her mouth and eyes to portray her silence, and how she has been stripped of her identity.
Butet-Roch, Laurence. (2015) The bitter legacy of Canada’s forced assimilation schools. The New Yorker. Available from The Bitter Legacy of Canada’s Forced-Assimilation Boarding Schools | The New Yorker
Signs of Your Identity — Daniella Zalcman