Artist Statement 

Doing this topic started off with me wanting to just talk about Ethiopia culture. Until I started to google my research the only thing that would [pop up was women rights in Ethiopia. My mind shifted immediately. I became so interested in the topic of women rights in ethiopia. And my heart became even more affectionate when it came to this topic. It was really sad to hear about until I decided the whole world actually needs to know about this. Ethiopia shouldn’t just be known as the country that eats raw meat even though that does seem interesting but it’s more to know than we thought. 

The purpose of me for writing this topic was to bring awareness on the underground of FGM and to also show thay women rights in ethiopia are really bad. I wanted to target mainly females because these are the same females that are supposed to come together and support each other. I see my piece being shown by showing off makeup qualities. I feel like that’s what brings my audience attention. I used logos for my appeal because I wanted to show off as much information that I can to my audience to be more interested in the topic. I picked a fake advertisement video as my genre because I know that my audience will be females and females love makeup. I love makeup so I used my own self as an idea. So basically I wanted to trick my audience by thinking they were going to be hearing about the new makeup drop. 

Doing this project was so emotional especially when it came to hearing these female stories. First I had to fully understand why FGM was created and how did it come about. Then I had to figure out what women’s rights in Ethiopia were like from a reasonable source. Then I had to decide how I wanted to put all my information together. I didn’t know if I wanted to do an article or if I wanted to do a youtube video. I was really happy about looking into fake advertisement videos. I wanted too happy about learning that FGM has always been covered up. At first I had to change my research perspective. My research was too broad. I had to look at a specific research. I definitely had to ask my professor what my research should mainly be about since FGM is a huge topic already. I didn’t want to add too much information and bore my audience. 

I think my video turned out great. I definitely evolved my video by adding a painting on my face that wasn’t planned. I changed my idea into a tik tok mini tutorial because I wanted viewers to see that the topic we actually know about and makeup shouldn’t be on our mind all the time. I would have added an interview if I was able to change my video. To definitely give my audience a glimpse of what these females really go through from their perspective. I’m happiest about my painting on my face since it took a while to do and I’m not a good painter at all. This project was pretty hard since I had to remember what to say during my video and do makeup at the same time. In the end I feel like this was the greatest college project I have ever done. I say this because in the future I will know to always put my perspective on other people’s shoes to see how to target that specific group.