Same, Same, Different is about cultural exchange, and the artist’s personal journey crossing cultural and geographic boundaries. It foremost includes a mixed media project between young school children in West Africa and Montana. The two groups participated in this exchange through the making and sharing of art.
Two groups of 5th grade aged children participated in the project. One group lives in Dembayara, a rural village in the high desert region of Guinea, West Africa, and the second in Bozeman, Montana, a mountain town in the Northwest United States - two vastly different places both geographically and culturally, yet both rich in their own unique ways.
The children were asked to take pictures of their lives on disposable cameras, and make relief prints portraying something in their life that they value. All of the materials used to make the relief prints were locally sourced. In Guinea the prints were pressed on fabric bought in a market in Conakry, Guinea’s capital city. The paint was mixed from dirt resourced from an artisan gold mine near Baro, Guinea and printed with local cassava plant. From Bozeman the prints were carved with Montana-grown potatoes, the paint was mixed with the rich red dirt of southern Utah, and printed on handmade paper made with recycled local plants and newspaper. Budeski used these local resources as a way to talk about person and place, and how our homes influence our authentic selves.
Engaging with children - the subjects of the work - as artists themselves, allows them to claim their own image. This project works to give ownership of cultural and personal identity to the subject and to break conventional ideas of portraiture. Children portrayed their authenticity by making relief prints (non-representational self-portraits) and documenting their lives through simple photography.
By placing this conversation in the hands of children we received a defenseless, honest representation of the participants reality through their own eyes. Budeski desired to remove the bias that often plagues photography of different cultures by foreign artists. This bias often manifests as a removed viewpoint instead of an authentic local perspective. When we remove this bias we are more accurately able to understand and empathize with each other.
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Budeski is motivated to share these truths as she is deeply connected to both communities. She grew up in Bozeman and was encultured in its community. African drumming found her in Bozeman, and it became her instrument and outlet. After traveling to Guinea, Budeski found family in the people she met. Her love and reverence for both places, and her work with Guinea Exchange is the vehicle for this show. Guinea Exchange, as represented here, is a non-profit which Budeski volunteers for. They facilitate exchange by empowering Guinean innovation and success while sharing its rich culture through drum and dance in places like Bozeman. They primarily focus on the education, employment, and health services for Guineans. Guinea Exchange puts to action the goals of this show: cultural exchange and understanding.
A special thanks to Sarah Lee Parker and Mamady Mansaré for hosting the artist, Sarah Budeski in Guinea and for facilitating this project in the school in Dembayara, and to Peter Strand and his class at Irving Elementary School for opening their classroom and participating in this project.
Photos by Ryan Day Thompson
