Sarah Kim
Vividly Blurred
Prompt: A research-driven, independent project investigating how a shared historical or cultural phenomenon is represented through artworks made in different time periods. Students examine how artists across generations respond to a similar set of concerns, such as abstraction, visibility, labor, technology, identity, by situating each artwork within its historical moment.
In this project, I made a zine that reinterprets James Rosenquist’s “F-111”, exploring how people perceive and weigh visual information. The zine is designed in the shape of glasses, symbolizing the scope of human vision. Drawing inspiration from the fact that the human eye cannot fully focus on two different objects simultaneously, I intentionally arranged images of contrasting natures across the two lenses: historical war events on the left and advertisements for consumer goods from the same era on the right. As information of such disparate natures is repeatedly exposed side-by-side, people gradually begin to perceive these images as carrying equal weight. While each individual image remains vivid and striking, the overall meaning becomes increasingly blurred as they accumulate through repetition. Thus, the title of the work—Vividly Blurred— encapsulates this contradictory sensation.