Abramovic's Photograph Distinctively Visual

The theme of Abramovic’s photograph can be applicable to the distortion in the minds of Ngugi, Orwell and Tan. The lady in the photograph looks perturbed with one eye shut as the hand stops her from attaining a true understanding of her world. Likewise, colonization distorts the relation Ngugi shares with his language and the relation Orwell shares with his conscience. Additionally, the relation Tan shares with her mother tongue is distorted too. The obstructing hand from the photograph is symbolic of the colonial power that replaces Ngugi’s mother tongue by enforcing English as the official language thus pushing Ngugi away from his culture and identity. Furthermore, colonization also represents the hand from the photograph that stops Orwell from doing what he desires to do rather than adhering to the responsibilities and demands the job entails. …show more content…
Similarly, Tan can be seen alike to the woman in the photograph as Tan struggles to comprehend her relation with the two languages she speaks as a bilingual child. She tries to distance herself from her culture, but eventually she is able to see from her “both” eyes and embrace her heritage. Through Ngugi and Tan’s distortion of self-image and clouded perception of the world, it can be inferred that language is crucial in defining an identity, consequently, the result of an entangled relation with “language” results in distortion. Therefore, when Gikūyū was taken away from Ngugi, he could no longer picture himself in the world around him and similarly Tan could not fully understand how her cultural inheritance shaped her identity until she discovered the importance of her mother’s language. Thus language is the tool that helps humans comprehend their identity and gain clarity of the world around them. But when does the hand, causing distortion in the photograph move out of the line of

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Abramovic's Photograph Distinctively Visual