My Life – Your racism
Racism hurts!
Constantly and every single time!
Besides physical attacks and openly racist bar room clichés it's s the putative harmless everyday racism, also known as microaggressions, BIPoC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) have to deal with.
For her whole life Neustadt artist Sara Sun Hee Martischius is accompanied by such.
With the photography project „My life – Your racism“ Martischius wants to invite the observer to acknowledge and question their own internalized racist beliefs.
One racist comment doesn't make you a racist, but quiet often „meaning well“ isn't „doing well“.
Have a look at the pictures and try to imagine how it feels to repeatedly find yourself in situations as shown.
I am not alone. Every day millions of BIPoC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) have to endure racism. To make it more visible here are some voices of other stigmatized people:
How did the photography project My Life – Your racism evolve?
One way to explain:
Who am I ?
That question resonates in most of us.
Consistently I am asking myself this not so easy to answer question.
Meanwhile I became so many diffenrent things.
I see myself as cis-woman, mother, partner, photographer, artist, horse trainer/riding instructor, friend, daughter, daughter-in-law, cousin, aunt.
But already with my name there always appear questions.
Sara Sun Hee Martischius.
A really beautiful name. I like it.
But when people read it, they always wonder about that Sun Hee.
And when they see me, they wonder where my first name and family name come from.
As a baby I was adopted from South Korea to Germany. As so many other kids in the 80s.
Source: Das siebte Kind – https://spiegel.de/spiegel/a-609300.html
I grew up pretty privileged.
In a White family with a pretty homogeneous White environment.
I knew for all my life that I was adopted, because it was hard to hide my looks which are so different to all the others in a typical small palatinate town.
That's why I always had to deal with (everyday-) racism.
In the 70s Chester Pierce called it microaggressions what I myself and other BIPoC have to endure.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression
Alice Hasters compares it to moskito bites in a text for the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung.
Source: https://m.bpb.de/apuz/antirassismus-2020/316756/mueckenstiche-mit-system-zum-umgang-mit-alltagsrassismus
Those are some of the reasons why I started the project.
It is very personal.I am not an anti racism expert.
I want the observer to grasp the absurdity (of racsim).
I hope to give space to other BIPoC by sharing the interviews and hope to educate people which are fortunate enough not to experience racism.
Hopefully they want to become an ally.
My vision is a world without discrimination for our kids. We are still so far away from that but it's one step at a time and I hope I can contribute a tiny little bit.
Fight Racism!
Recommended reading (in German):
Exit Racism von Tupoka Ogette
Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen, aber wissen sollten von Alice Hasters
Der weiße Fleck von Mohamed Amjahid
Das Buch vom Antirassismus von Tiffany Jewell & Aurélia Durand
The works were shown first in Neustadt/Weinstraße as part of Demokratietage Hambach at these locations:
Complete Programm:
