The Curatorial Rationale is a part of the Exhibition component of IB Art Visual course requirements. It is used to articulate and defend my artistic intentions and goals for the show.
The theme of my exhibition is Conflict and Resistance. In particular, I explored different types of conflicts and how people persevere. I was influenced to use this theme because of some struggles my friends and I have gone through that I wanted to bring awareness to, highlighting how one should not give up or give in.
In each of my artworks, I show a different type of conflict. I explored physical conflict versus internal resistance in The Beauty in Battle. In The Unseen Grip, I depicted the struggle against forces imposed upon someone, in particular, I showed that the person you may be fighting is yourself. The eating disorder anorexia inspired Bare Minimum. Constructing Beauty drew upon societal views and influence on the female body shape. The stages of grief inspired The Phases of Perseverance. Unlike the internal conflicts in my previous artworks, Stopping the Storm and Heartland showed the universal struggles of war and violence. Lastly, I chose to connect all my artworks by illustrating the source of all conflicts and the decision to resist: the brain in The Base of Knowledge.
I was influenced by individual artworks from the artists Diego Salas and Leonardo da Vinci in my artworks. In a few of my other artworks, I took inspiration from multiple different artworks by the same artist, either Henry Moore or Vincent van Gogh. Henry Moore's symbolic expression of emotions inspired Unseen Grip, Stopping the Storm, and Heartland. As Moore said, "Hands can convey so much, they can beg or refuse, take or give, be open or clenched, show content or anxiety. They can be young or old, beautiful or deformed." Vincent Van Gogh used color in some paintings to express emotions, this inspired my color choices in The Phases of Perseverance. I was also influenced by sculptures and historical wars. In Constructing Beauty, I examined ancient Greek sculptures of women to understand societal "ideals" of women throughout the ages. Stopping the Storm was influenced by the movie "Hacksaw Ridge," a rendition of a battle during World War II, where Desmond Doss, an army medic, refused to raise arms and be violent. Heartland was inspired by the Crusades, a war between Christians and Muslims over the holy land in Europe, where soldiers brought the hearts of their fallen companions back to their homeland to be buried.
I decided to use a variety of materials to illustrate how no person is the same in how they resolve conflicts. For four of my artworks, I decided to work with colored pencils because I felt I could best illustrate details to create the most realistic illustrations. In my hyper-realistic artworks, my goal was to illustrate them in a way to best connect to the audience who either understands the conflict or wants to learn. Constructing Beauty was made of an assemblage board with steel nails forming an "idealized" woman and symbolizing how women's bodies are harmed as they attempt to recreate society's idealized form. For the other two artworks, I decided to create three-dimensional models to allow the viewer to walk around and see all angles. I believed that this would help the audience to create a deeper connection to the human anatomical components. The Phases of Perseverance were made from oil pastels on black paper. Unlike my other artworks, I forced myself to limit the details instead showing a flow between the stages of grief and diversify my creation methods.
The arrangement of my exhibition is centered around the brain to show the idea that the brain is the cause of all conflicts, but also the reason for resilience. I wanted the audience to feel like they are at the center of a dissection of the body. They would be able to see the impact of different aspects, both internal and external. For my 2D artworks, I put the artworks in order of creation, starting with The Beauty in Battle and ending with The Phases of Perseverance. Both The Base of Knowledge and Stopping the Storm are centered. The biology hallway was the place where I decided to showcase my artworks that illustrated a human body's function using either physical or emotional characteristics.