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Mixed Media Fine Art
SECTION 1
Me Ladies: Duality, Soft Power, and Re-authored Femininity
'Me Ladies' is a mixed media fine art diptych developed from photographic source material captured during research visits to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), focusing on women’s fashion, period dress, and mannequin displays within historical exhibitions.
Rather than documenting garments as museum artefacts, the photographic process isolates posture, silhouette, fabric structure, and feminine form. These elements are then reworked through digital and mixed media processes to construct new visual narratives that reposition Black female presence within historical aesthetic frameworks from which it has often been absent or marginalised.
The series engages directly with questions of visibility, authorship, and historical accuracy. By grounding the work in museum-held fashion collections, Me Ladies anchors its visual language in verifiable material culture, ensuring that the reimagining of femininity is informed by authentic historical reference rather than speculative reconstruction.
Through repurposing and reframing, the work resists static interpretations of history. The figures emerge not as passive mannequins or frozen ideals but as reanimated presences—reclaiming elegance, complexity, and agency within visual traditions that have rarely centred Black British women.
Classification
Form: Mixed Media Fine Art
Method: Painterly portrait construction using photographic and digital layers
Positioning: Black feminist visual practice, HCCA, cultural reframing
Method & Positioning
This body of work is
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Concept-led
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Aesthetically authored
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Theoretically situated
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Intentionally edited
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Positioned within cultural and historical discourse
Sustainability, Ethics & Reuse (Eco/Green Research Practice)
An integral component of Me Ladies is its commitment to sustainable and ethical creative practice. The series repurposes existing photographic material that would otherwise remain unused—images that, if stored indefinitely or discarded, would continue to consume digital storage resources or be lost entirely.
By reactivating these photographs within research-led fine art practice, the work adopts a circular creative methodology, reducing the need for new resource-intensive production while extending the lifespan and value of existing digital material.
This approach aligns with environmentally conscious research practices by:
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Minimising additional energy use associated with long-term digital storage
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Reducing waste through creative reuse
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Treating archival material as an active research resource rather than static data
Within this framework, sustainability is not an add-on but a methodological choice—where reuse, care, and intentionality form part of the ethical foundation of the work.
Together, these principles position 'Me Ladies' within practice-based research, visual anthropology, feminist historiography, and sustainable creative methodologies, where mixed-media fine art serves as a means of historical reframing, cultural continuity, and responsible knowledge production.
Across all three sections, mixed media functions as a methodological bridge—allowing historical visual languages to be reclaimed, re-scripted, and inhabited without deference or nostalgia.
Artwork credit:
Michi Masumi (2025)
'Me Ladies '01'—Photographic-Based Mixed Media Fine Art Portraiture
Artwork credit:
Michi Masumi (2024)
'Me Ladies '02'—Photographic-Based Mixed Media Fine Art Portraiture
Photography Credit:
Michi Masumi (2024)
'V & A Museum - London UK
Archival & Museum Context
During a 2024 research visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A),
I photographed historical women’s garments and mannequins as part of an observational study into representation, fashion, and visibility within major UK cultural institutions.
These images were not originally intended for exhibition. They were later repurposed within the Me Ladies mixed-media series to support historically informed visual storytelling and accurate period reference.
This process reflects an ethical and sustainable reuse of existing photographic material, extending the life of unused images while situating contemporary Black British female presence within historically grounded visual frameworks.
Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) (n.d.) 100 Years of Fashionable Women’s Wear.
Research reference video.
Original source: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/100-years-of-fashionable-womenswear/
SECTION 2
Reclaiming Classical Portraiture: Presence, Lineage, and Reframing
Classification
Form: Mixed Media Fine Art
Method: Concept-led, painterly photographic assemblage
Positioning: HCCA, Black feminist visual methodology, visual anthropology
This body of work reclaims classical portrait traditions historically reserved for European subjects, re-situating Black women within painterly visual languages of refinement, lineage, and permanence. Drawing on the compositional grammar of Old Master portraiture—pose, lighting, adornment, and stillness—the series reframes Black female presence as authored, intentional, and culturally anchored rather than marginal or symbolic.
Rather than reproducing historical aesthetics uncritically, these works operate as acts of visual correction. The painterly surface—constructed through layered photography, digital painting, textural overlays, and collage—functions as both homage and disruption. The figures are not aspirational substitutions but rightful occupants of a visual tradition from which they were largely excluded. Here, portraiture becomes an act of reclamation, asserting Black British and diasporic womanhood as archival, contemporary, and enduring.
Artwork credit:
Michi Masumi
'The Black British Female Visual Ethnography Exploration Series' 2023-24
Includes:
'Da Lovers Inna Da Corner' (2024) Photographic art (Photoshop & Lightroom): Honourable Silver Award—London Photography Awards 2024
Category: Student Fine Art Portraiture
© Michi Masumi
Method & Positioning
This body of work is:
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Concept-led
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Aesthetically authored
-
Theoretically situated
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Intentionally edited
-
Positioned within cultural and historical discourse
These principles situate my series within practice-based research and human-centered creative anthropology, where mixed media portraiture operates as a site of cultural memory, lineage, and visual authorship rather than representational display.
SECTION 3
Fragmentation, Gesture, and Refusal of Resolution
(semi-abstract/expressive portraits)
Artwork credit:
Michi Masumi (2024-2025)
'Model: Jay
'A Series of Complexities'
Fragmented Identity: Gesture, Texture, and Visual Resistance
This body of work moves away from classical restraint into fragmentation, colour, and surface disruption.
Faces are layered, fractured, and reassembled—rejecting singular narratives in favour of complexity, ambiguity, and emotional depth.
Influenced by expressionism and semi-abstract visual traditions, these works treat the face as a site of lived experience rather than likeness.
Gesture, colour blocking, and textural rupture operate as visual language—signalling refusal, introspection, and survival.
The images are not designed to resolve or soothe; they remain deliberately unsettled, mirroring the realities of Black existence within digital, cultural, and historical systems.
Citations & Research Context
This body of work is situated within interdisciplinary practice-based research spanning visual anthropology, Black feminist visual culture, autoethnography, and human-centered creative technologies.
The mixed media works function as research artefacts, combining photographic source material, digital manipulation, painterly intervention, and AI-assisted processes to explore Black British female identity, memory, resistance, and visual reframing.
The approach draws on traditions of visual storytelling as cultural knowledge production rather than neutral representation (Pink, 2013) and aligns with Black feminist scholarship that foregrounds lived experience, embodiment, and counter-narrative as methodological tools (Collins, 2000; hooks, 1992).
Historical references to dress, posture, and form are informed by museum-based observation and archival photography, particularly through engagement with fashion collections and exhibitions at institutions such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, ensuring visual accuracy while critically reworking inherited aesthetics.
Digital and AI-assisted processes are used collaboratively, not generatively, as tools for reframing, visual empathy, and abstraction.
This aligns with critical perspectives on technology and race that call for ethical, human-centred engagement with digital systems rather than extraction or automation (Benjamin, 2019; Noble, 2018).
Reuse of existing photographic material also reflects a commitment to sustainable and low-impact creative practice, repositioning archival and unused images as active research material rather than disposable data.
Classification
Form: Mixed Media Fine Art
Method: Expressive digital–painterly assemblage
Positioning: BTCAS, HCCA, visual resistance practices
Method & Positioning
This body of work is
-
Concept-led
-
Aesthetically authored
-
Theoretically situated
-
Intentionally edited
-
Positioned within cultural, digital, and historical discourse
Mixed media operates as both method and metaphor—enabling fragmentation as a legitimate form of knowledge rather than a visual problem to be solved.
This page explicitly applies the following original research frameworks developed by me:
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MAETT (Masumi Applied Ethnographic Tools and Theories)—guiding the observational, sensory, and culturally grounded analysis embedded in the visual process.
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MMAT (Masumi Methodology of Art and Technology)—structuring the ethical integration of photography, digital tools, and AI-assisted processes.
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MPM (Mobile Praxis Method)—supporting flexible, adaptive, and neurodivergent-friendly modes of creative research production.
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ADN (Anthro-Digital Narratives Framework)—enabling layered storytelling that connects personal, cultural, and technological narratives.
Together, these frameworks position the mixed media works as practice-led research outputs, where art operates simultaneously as method, analysis, and cultural intervention.
References:
Barthes, R. (1980) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. London: Vintage.
Benjamin, R. (2019). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Campt, T. (2017) Listening to Images. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Candy, L. and Edmonds, E. (2018) Practice-Based Research in the Creative Arts. Cham: Springer.
Collins, P.H. (2000). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
hooks, b. (1992) Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press.
Mulvey, L. (2009) Visual and Other Pleasures. 2nd edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Noble, S.U. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: NYU Press.
Pink, S. (2013). Doing Visual Ethnography. 3rd edn. London: Sage.
Tate (2015). The Visibility of Black British Art. London: Tate Research Publication.
Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) (2024) Fashion and Textile Collections. London: V&A Museum.