NSHS

How much do you really know about your culture? Do you think you represent your own culture well? From the start of nomadic hunter-gatherer societies, cultures have shaped ways of life. It has been a source of pride, community, and happiness, and with increasing globalization, maintaining cultural identity has become a constant struggle. Some cultures and languages have merged into larger categories. As a result of this collectivism, certain aspects of individual cultures have been lost. Previous generations are unable to pass on their own cultural expressions, such as music, traditional dress, and idioms. This has been historically evident in the ethnic cleansing and forced assimilation of native societies in many areas of the world. 

Our end goal is to raise awareness about cultures that have been overtaken or are dying because of our ever-changing society. Factors such as globalization, industrialization, climate change, and immigration have merged many different peoples. As humanity enters a post-COVID world, we believe it is critical to take advantage of the valuable global connections that had been taken away for a year. Only by actively looking to amplify marginalized communities, is it possible to truly celebrate cultural diversity. 

While creating the mural during three weeks in August, we painted on 7x6 foot plywood (given to us by the carpentry department) in acrylic paint, which was donated to us by the art department. The painting features a green and blue background that resembles the continents and the ocean: a global worldview. Painting the background took us about three hours. After waiting for the background to dry, we painted abstract faces on top using acrylic. Painting the faces took us four to five hours. The faces are meant to symbolize the various cultures that animate modern societies to this day. While our original idea was to highlight specific cultures, Newton South’s UNESCO team ultimately decided against it. We hesitated to choose between which cultures were most important, visually appealing, and worthy of our recognition: a highly arbitrary, unfair view of the world. As such, we made the painting more abstract than specific, to symbolize the general idea of “culture”. 

We are in the process of making paper butterflies to stick on the mural. The butterflies represent growth; a caterpillar’s growth process to become a butterfly parallels the passing on of cultures in communities. Often, through bonding with peers from the same culture and teachings from elders, children are able to learn their own culture. Unfortunately, not all cultures have the same opportunity to continue. On the back of the painting, we plan to write various idioms in different languages with white paint markers. These idioms are half-speeches; our goal is that by representing idioms, we can illustrate the evolution and adaptation of languages to communities.