The quote I chose for this project is “I’m a prisoner of words unsaid” it comes from an Alicia Keys poem from a 2006 Def Petry Jam, called P.O.W. The poem compares being a prisoner of war to being a prisoner of words. Keys creates dark imagery of being trapped in solitary confinement withing her own self and emphasizes that this prison is of her own creation. This poem is very significant to me because I heard it for the first time at a time in my life where I found myself feeling these exact feelings of having so much to say but muting myself because of fear. At this time, I was an undocumented teenager trying to navigate the future that lay ahead of me. I felt invisible, and hollow.
One aspect of the poem that really resonated with me was the part that talks about freeing yourself from the prison as the prison is just imaginary. I decided that since I was being defined by other people, it was time to define myself. The following works are inspired by this dark time before the realization of self-emancipation.
For this iteration I decided to focus of the feeling of pressure. Often the words that want to be said become a dark pattern or senseless characters, when, in reality, it is the same statement being repeated over and over in your head until it becomes nonsense. I displaced the text to create the illusion of prison bars and I used transparency in the middle to bring out the main text in the middle. I also wanted a newspaper feel that reflected prison life, when newsprint is touched it often leaves dark marks on your fingers, just like prison sentences can also tarnish your life.
This iteration was inspired by the wrought iron gates that are sometimes in front of old mental health facilities, and by the gated corridors leading into modern prisons. These gates are often dark, uninviting, and sharp. The combination of these elements reflects the concept of the poem which talks about being in a prison, but the prison is inside your mind. I thought it would be a good idea to marry these two concepts and come up with a grim, ominous design that conveys both images given by the quote into one composition.
For the final iteration I combined both concepts from the previous compositions into one. I maintained the ‘newspaper’ background color and I also added a red element for emphasis in conveying the message of what the quote is about. I wanted to simulate boxes full of words and thoughts piling up inside of my head and spilling out eventually. I used the red letters to emphasize the acronym “POW” and give more poignancy to the feeling of being trapped. I used the W to create the illusion of lips on the silhouette of the head. I finished by adding the word unsaid made up of these ‘spilling thoughts’ and created movement around the focal point therefore drawing the eye from the top of the page to the bottom of the page.
