Erika DeFreitas

Self-Portrait as a Coloured Woman
Colouring Book
2011


What resonated with me  after recently being referred to as a coloured woman, were the contour-lined coloring book images and the question, if I were to be a colored woman, what shade would one color me? I created a coloring book, one that contains the same self-portrait on each page. This coloring book was made for the exhibition Here and There at the Propellor Centre for the Visual Arts, curated by One Hour Empire. The book is available for gallery visitors to color in a portrait with one of the crayons of their choice. There is the juxtaposition of many spaces within this one piece; the place of ‘here’ within myself and how I choose to be represented and the place of ‘there’ through another’s perspective.



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