IB Senior Art Exhibit ‘Trinity’ explores cultural misunderstandings, decay, anxiety
April 3, 2018
GUELPH, Ontario – Years of hard work culminated in a celebration on Thursday, as students in the Upper Grand DSB’s International Baccalaureate Diploma Program hosted their Senior Art Exhibit.
“Trinity” was held at the Guelph Civic Museum on Thursday March 29.
The exhibition featured the work of senior art students Fatima, Alex and Erica, who have been working toward this exhibition over the past two years.
In that period, they have developed and explored a theme and created their artworks. “All of their learnings, failures and excitements are part of the process,” explained Barbara Muscat, Visual Arts & Media Studies and IB Diploma Program Teacher at GCVI. The students were also responsible for installing and curating the show.
At the “Trinity” event, viewers had the chance to explore their art while diving deeper into the themes the students developed.
Fatima’s theme is “Angry Ethnic: An Exploration of Cross-Cultural Experience as a South Asian Canadian.”
Her work explores “connections to cultures, heritage and family, as well as emotions related to discrimination, prejudice, taboo and cultural misunderstandings in both Western culture and South Asian culture.”
Fatima said her exhibition was originally inspired by the lack of diversity in Hollywood and the media, as an outcry for representation. Eventually, she decided to explore “societal perceptions of South Asians and my own bicultural experience, offering an insight into my own dichotomous identity, and the ‘tug of war’ between the two societies that are most prevalent in my life.”
Alex’s work, “Deterioration, An Exploration of the Beauty in the Different Ways We Fall Apart,” explores ageing and decay in a society that idealizes perfection. “This exhibition aims to bring attention to the beauty and variety in how things and ourselves fall apart and question the attitudes surrounding this deterioration,” she said.
Alex’s hope is that viewers will begin to question their own biases and preconceived notions of deterioration and reflect upon where those biases originally came from.
Erica’s theme was “Vexed, An Exploration of Frustration, Anger, Stress and Confusion.”
Erica’s work explores her relationship with anger, frustration, stress and confusion. She describes the collection of pieces as “Shambolic” – with no seeming consistency in style or collective meaning.
It’s her hope that the viewer can relate to and understand the anxieties presented in the pieces. “They are intended to remind everyone of their own teenage years, and reflect the unbalanced relationship between their own feelings,” she said.
Fatima, Alex and Erica created a beautiful and thought-provoking exhibition. In addition to being part of their course requirements, “Trinity” was also a cause for celebration, as this is the first cohort of students who will complete the IB Diploma Program at GCVI.
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