The topic for my presentation is the need for parents to vaccinate their children. I have always felt like vaccinating children was always an important step, but recently I feel a need to take this issue to the public, as celebrities announce openly that they with to deny their children life saving vaccines. Most notably, or to me most enraging, was Kat Von D’s announcement that she would not vaccinate her soon to arrive son. Kat announced in her June 7th Instagram post that she would be having a, “natural, drug-free home birth in water with a midwife and doula (she also) has the intention of raising a vegan child, without vaccinations” (@TheKatVonD, Via Instagram). This really bothered me, as almost all of the other items she mentioned are safe and accepted, or the child could decide to end (veganism); but the decision to prevent the vaccination of her child is one that may kill them. When asked to create a confrontational response to any issue, I knew the uneducated denial of vaccination was certainly the issue I would like to discuss. People such as Kat Von D deny their children vaccinations for several reasons. Most popularly is the idea that they should not introduce outside objects to the immune systems of their children. The second runner up seems to be the idea that these vaccinations will cause issues such as Down Syndrome (a disease that is caused by an in vitro genetic material separation issue, not the introduction of vaccines). People deny their children vaccinations because they are uninformed. As such, I wish to create a poignant piece of art, one that will create a need for people to look into the issue, and discover what really is best for not only their own children, but for the children of others as well.
As a preface, I feel a need to say that some people have seen the conceptualization of my piece as very… morbid. I wish to create an image of a skeletal baby, residing in a cradle. Hanging above, with the baby reaching towards it, will be a mobile of syringes. In the background, there will be a larger skeleton, easily presumed as the parent of this poor child. The parent skeleton will be reaching over to the mobile, severing the ties of the syringes to the mobile. This act will effectively represent the removal of the assistance the vaccinations would have provided the life of this child; effectively deeming the child as dead, as the skeletal form it takes in the image represents. Initially, I wished to make the parent human, in order to make the piece much more easier for an unknowing audience to understand what transpires within it. However, the more I thought about it, the more agender and without race or age I wanted the “parent” to be. I wanted those that interact with my piece to be able to see that any of us could become “the monster” causing death and societal destruction. In regards to my ideas of implementation, or sharing, of my work, I plan to meet with the directors of New Jersey City University’s art galleries, so I may request them to display my work. As a science student, I am also considering asking the Biology department if they would like to display the piece as well, considering it is heavily influenced by my own understanding of science. As far as interaction with my piece is concerned, I am certain this work will resonate within viewers. The morbidly blunt overtones are sure to make you think about how lucky we are to live in a time where modern medicine is well developed.
Although I am studying biology, I am also studying secondary education. I plan to attend Montclair’s Speech Therapy graduate program, in order to align myself with the capability to become a school speech therapist. As such, I do not see my creation having very much of a bearing on my future career path. However, it will certainly impact my understanding of the issue, as well as my ability to discuss this topic in my everyday life. I have gained a lot of new insight supporting the stance I hold. I most definitely can better support my ideas now that I have done the work to research why people should be vaccinating their children. The risk unvaccinated children pose to those that have undergone inoculations is also a point I did not fully understand, but now have a clear idea about.
Many art pieces have been made to create a similar protest against this issue. My favorite amongst them is the photography work of Alexa Sinclair. “Set in an 18th century English doctor’s surgery… (the) portrait features Dr. Edward Jenner inoculating James Phipps. (The young man would become) the first person to receive the smallpox vaccine. Dr. Jenner’s… work led to the eradication of smallpox in 1980… The aristocratic woman in the center represents how smallpox did not discriminate, affecting the rich and poor alike. The many flowers throughout the piece symbolize the global impact of smallpox” (“Bill Gates”). This piece is important because it shows the moment in which we learned diseases which caused many early childhood deaths could be vaccinated against in order to improve quality of life. I want to convey a similar sentiment with my own piece; that our modern society improved quality of life is founded on the vaccination of our children.
Works Cited:
“Bill Gates Commissions Pro-Vaccine Artworks to Remind Us Why Immunization Is Important.” ZME Science, 27 Feb. 2015, ww.zmescience.com/medicine/bill-gates-vaccine-artwork-042423/.
No comments:
Post a Comment