Identity

What is Identity?  the distinguishing character or personality of an individual :

Where does our identity come from?

What is a stereotype? a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.

How is identity accomplished?

Identity: What is identity?  Can it change?  How is it made or constructed?

i·den·ti·ty n

1.Who somebody is or what something is, especially the name somebody or something is known by.

See also individuality

2. The set of characteristics that somebody recognizes as belonging uniquely to himself or herself and constituting his or her individual personality for life

Michael Ray Charles’ graphically styled paintings investigate racial stereotypes drawn from a history of American advertising, product packaging, billboards, radio jingles, and television commercials. Caricatures of African-American experience, such as Aunt Jemima, are represented in Charles’s work as ordinary depictions of blackness, yet are stripped of the benign aura that lends them an often-unquestioned appearance of truth. In each of his paintings, notions of beauty, ugliness, nostalgia, and violence emerge and converge, reminding us that we cannot divorce ourselves from a past that has led us to where we are, who we have become, and how we are portrayed.