Visual & Performing Arts · 7th Grade · The Art of Critique: History and Analysis · Weeks 19-27

Art and Identity: Personal and Cultural

Students will explore how artists use their work to express personal identity, cultural heritage, and collective experiences.

• Common Core State Standards
• NCAS: Connecting VA.Cn11.1.7
• NCAS: Responding VA.Re7.1.7

About This Topic

Identity is one of the most compelling subjects in contemporary visual art, and one with direct relevance to 7th graders who are in the middle of the developmental work of forming their own sense of self. Artists use portraiture, self-portraiture, abstraction, narrative sequences, and cultural iconography to explore who they are, where they come from, and how they relate to the communities that formed them. In US arts education, this topic supports both technical skill development and the social-emotional learning that is increasingly central to effective classroom practice.

The artists who address identity most powerfully include Frida Kahlo, whose self-portraits embed Mexican Indigenous and Tehuantepec symbolism alongside personal trauma; Faith Ringgold, whose quilted story works address Black womanhood in America using both folk craft and fine art traditions; Kehinde Wiley, who places Black men in compositions borrowed from canonical European portraiture to challenge whose stories are treated as monumental; and Yinka Shonibare, who uses Dutch wax fabric to explore British-Nigerian colonial identity. Each represents a different strategy for using art to locate the self within larger cultural and historical forces.

Active learning is especially valuable here because identity is personal and can feel risky to examine publicly. Structured activities that begin with analysis of professional artists' identity-based work before inviting personal expression create a safe runway for students who are still developing their own voices.

Key Questions

1. Explain how art can serve as a powerful medium for exploring and affirming personal identity.
2. Analyze how artists represent and celebrate diverse cultural heritages through their work.
3. Compare how different artists from similar backgrounds express their identity through varied artistic styles.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze how specific visual elements and symbols in artworks by Frida Kahlo, Faith Ringgold, Kehinde Wiley, and Yinka Shonibare communicate themes of personal and cultural identity.
• Compare the strategies used by at least two artists to represent their cultural heritage and lived experiences within their artwork.
• Explain how portraiture and self-portraiture can be used as methods to explore and affirm individual identity.
• Create a visual artwork that expresses a personal or cultural identity, utilizing at least one technique observed in the study of professional artists.

Before You Start

Elements and Principles of Art

Why: Students need a foundational understanding of elements like line, color, and shape, and principles like balance and emphasis to analyze how artists use them to convey meaning.

Introduction to Art History: Major Movements and Artists

Why: Familiarity with different art historical periods and key figures provides context for understanding how artists throughout history have addressed themes of identity.

Key Vocabulary

Self-Portraiture	An artwork created by the artist themselves, often used to explore personal identity, emotions, and experiences.
Cultural Iconography	The use of symbols, images, and motifs that are specific to a particular culture or heritage, conveying shared meanings and values.
Personal Narrative	An artistic representation of an individual's life story, experiences, or memories, often conveyed through visual storytelling.
Hybrid Identity	An identity formed from the intersection of multiple cultural backgrounds, experiences, or social influences.

Watch Out for These Misconceptions

Common Misconception

Artwork about identity is self-indulgent or less important than art addressing 'universal' themes.

What to Teach Instead

The assumption that some themes are 'universal' while others are merely personal usually reflects whose experience has historically been treated as the default. Analysis activities that show how deeply personal, culturally specific works have achieved global resonance help students challenge this bias and recognize specificity as a potential source of power rather than a limitation.

Common Misconception

Artists who reference their cultural heritage are limiting their artistic scope.

What to Teach Instead

Cultural specificity is often the source of an artwork's power, not a constraint on it. Examining how artists like Frida Kahlo became globally iconic through deeply personal cultural imagery, rather than by adopting a 'neutral' international style, helps students understand that rootedness and universality are not opposites.

Common Misconception

Personal identity and cultural identity are separate things that artists address in different kinds of work.

What to Teach Instead

Individual identity is formed within and in relation to cultural, racial, national, and community identities. The artists who most powerfully address personal identity are usually the ones who most clearly show it as inseparable from these larger contexts. Analysis of works that hold both dimensions simultaneously gives students more accurate and more useful analytical tools.

Active Learning Ideas

Comparative Analysis: How Do These Artists See Themselves?

Show three self-portraits from artists of different cultural backgrounds and eras (such as Frida Kahlo, Kehinde Wiley, and a historical European master). Students individually identify the cultural symbols and visual choices that communicate identity in each, then small groups compare findings and discuss what each artist chose to make visible and what they chose to leave out.

35 min·Small Groups

Think-Pair-Share: What Would You Make Visible?

Students write privately: if you were making an artwork about your own identity, what images, symbols, or objects would you include? They share with one partner before the class discusses patterns (what kinds of things did people choose?) and differences (what did people choose not to share, and why might that be?).

20 min·Pairs

Gallery Walk: Cultural Heritage in Contemporary Art

Post images of five or six contemporary artists who explicitly reference their cultural heritage. Students rotate and record at each work: what specific cultural element is referenced, how the artist has transformed it into a personal artistic statement rather than mere documentation, and what the work makes visible about the relationship between individual and community identity.

30 min·Small Groups

Inquiry Circle: An Artist Outside Our Usual Study

Small groups each research one identity-based artist from a cultural background not yet represented in their study that year. Groups analyze what identity the artist explores, what visual strategies they use, and what social or historical context shapes their work, then present findings to the class.

50 min·Small Groups

Real-World Connections

• Museum curators, like those at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, research and exhibit artworks that explore diverse identities, helping the public understand different perspectives and histories.
• Graphic designers and illustrators working for cultural organizations or advertising agencies often use iconography and personal narratives to create visuals that resonate with specific communities and celebrate heritage.
• Community art projects, such as murals in urban neighborhoods, frequently serve to express collective identity and shared experiences, fostering a sense of belonging and pride.

Assessment Ideas

Exit Ticket

Provide students with an image of an artwork that explores identity. Ask them to write: 1) One symbol or element that communicates the artist's identity or heritage. 2) One question they have about the artwork or the artist's choices.

Discussion Prompt

Facilitate a class discussion using the prompt: 'How can looking at art from different cultures help us better understand our own identity and the identities of others?' Encourage students to reference specific artists studied.

Quick Check

Present students with short descriptions of different artistic approaches to identity (e.g., using personal objects, incorporating traditional patterns, reinterpreting historical portraits). Ask students to match each description to the artist whose work exemplifies it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do artists use art to explore personal identity?

Artists use self-portraiture, symbolic objects with personal or cultural significance, abstraction of personal experience into pattern or color, and narrative sequences that document change over time. The choice of medium itself can carry identity meaning: Faith Ringgold's quilts draw on domestic craft traditions associated with Black women's labor, making the material itself part of the statement about whose work and whose stories count.

What are some examples of artists who address cultural heritage in their work?

Kehinde Wiley reclaims European portraiture conventions for Black male subjects; Frida Kahlo embeds Aztec and Tehuantepec symbolism into intensely personal narrative paintings; Yinka Shonibare uses Dutch wax fabric (itself a colonial hybrid product) to explore British-Nigerian identity; Ai Weiwei documents Chinese cultural loss and political repression. Each uses cultural material as both subject and medium simultaneously.

How can art help 7th graders explore their own identity?

Art provides a non-verbal and non-linear channel for identity exploration that is developmentally central at this age. Creating work that includes symbols of personal significance, analyzing how professional artists have navigated identity questions, and discussing these works in a structured classroom context all give students vocabulary and tools for the identity formation work they are already doing whether or not it is named in class.

How does active learning support identity-focused art lessons?

Starting with analysis of others' identity artwork before asking students to create or share their own builds vocabulary and confidence, and reduces the social risk of the topic. Think-Pair-Share activities allow students to process personal connections before sharing publicly. Comparative analysis across cultures and eras broadens students' frameworks and helps them see their own identity formation as part of a universal human pattern, which often makes it feel less exposed.