Culture Shock. Statement of Purpose.

My parents came to the United States in the mid 1990’s from post-Soviet Crimea. They, like many other Eastern European immigrants, experienced culture shock and struggled with a language barrier. They were mentally lost and overwhelmed by the foreign environment they were in. Broken into 3 diptychs, my work is a psychological portrait of an Eastern European immigrant that compares and contrasts the mentality, visual and linguistic aspects of their home country with that of the United States. The head represents the contrast of mentalities, the eyes show the contrast of visuals and scale, while the mouth depicts the difference in communication and language. The left sides of all 3 diptychs portray a world that is foreign to the immigrant, but familiar to the American viewer. The right side, on the contrary, is a world familiar to the immigrant, but foreign for the viewer.