It is truly a cultural experience… and influence. What you have grown up experiencing will shape your understanding of gift. Being an American I have grown up giving gift that I spend time and energy and sometimes agonizing on what the person that I am looking for a gift for would appreciate. My boyfriend on the other hand is from Nigeria and his experience of gifts is very different gifts are expected… but they are given regardless if the person likes it or not. It is more about the sentiment, the fact that the person thought of you, it does not matter if it is something you did not like at all. Gifts are more about the sentiment. Gifts are an interesting thing because what is a gift really about, what embodies a gift? Is it the sentiment, the sacrifice… is it about ownership or continuity of exchange. Gifts become new things, or increasing in value with continuity of giving. What makes a gift/commodity? Is there an expectation of return? What are the ways gifts are given and how does that pertain to us as artists? We as artists learn and are given skills within our profession and the only way to increase the value of our skills as an artist is to use the talent you are given. If it remains stagnant then that it grows. A gift is an exchange of action and energy… yet in the book it is romanticized notion of giving… but could this be promoting power or obligation of them what you’ll receive. In giving a gift is it wrong to give a gift that you take please in because you know that the person receiving it will receive pleasure from it. As an artist is my art work a gift that I “bestow” on society… when many people may not want or even like it. Isn’t that glorifying artists to an unrealistic level.
Gift are sometimes just the right thing to do. The gift is viewed in different lights, in a grander scheme; a gift is a foreign object that one is projecting onto someone else. A gift should be understood as establishing contact because a gift giving is culturally bound. What is considered a gift in one culture is not in another.