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Watermelon with a Pearl Earring

Fundamentals of Art and Design, Fall 2022

Medium

Art Appropriation

Location

NC, USA

Time

Sep 2022

An art appropriation/parody based on Johannes Vermeer's 1665 famed painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Featured work in 100 Watermelons. Targeting the online phenomenon springing up in China's Tiktok.

Watermelon_with_a_Pearl_Earring.png

With TikTok’s in-built feature, people can use certain fruit with their own eyes and mouths on them as their video avatars instead of revealing their real faces. Compared to static or normal avatars, the combo of fruit and a human face is more hilarious, entertaining, and vivid with facial capture. While the feature has provided people with an approach to generating creative content without worrying about privacy, some people utilize this feature as a shelter or mask of their real selves. Some people began to hide behind the avatar to attack or even insult others, while this feature is a highly effective way of attracting attention; others use the fruit avatar to generate homogenized content or plagiarize others’ video content. The fruit avatar thus eliminates the personality that could be displayed through the representation of reality and also assists the users behind it with speaking anything without assuming any responsibility.


Therefore, I created this work: watermelon is green outside, all looking the same. While everyone can use it as a way of hiding themselves without individuality or applying it as a shelter, the flesh can be red with no seeds, red with white seeds, or yellow. But what lies inside? No one would know.

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