class of 2020 IB DP Art Exibition

Welcome to our Class of 2020 IB DP Art Exhibition

We may be unable to organise the traditional celebratory evening on our campus due to Covid-19, but we can still invite you to browse and learn about the work of our talented artists via this virtual exhibition. Enjoy!

The IB Diploma Visual Arts course encourages students to challenge their own creative and cultural expectations and boundaries while developing their own artistic voice. It is a demanding course that is thought-provoking to promote analytical skills in problem-solving and divergent thinking while working towards technical proficiency through different creative processes to achieve purposeful and authentic creative results.

The eight talented artists, cultivated and created their own unique individual art collections based on concepts and themes ranging from mother nature, the influence of social media on self-esteem, the idea of belonging and home, memories, conformity and repression. The quality of work produced was at a very impressive standard with the artists creating a broad range of art with installations, sculptures, film, digital media, photography, painting, drawing, textiles and mixed media.

Everyone demonstrated courage and passion in their individual art collections exhibiting the IB learner profile attributes of being risk-takers and open minded as creative communicators. They all worked extremely hard and although there was no physical exhibition due to Covid 19, they all should be extremely proud of themselves and their individual creative and personal achievements!

Alissa

The Conflict of Family

My exhibition focuses on the idea of conflict within the context of family and the emotions associated with events that draw tension to it. My exhibition is structured starting with pieces related to past emotions/memories which then transitions into pieces that depict recent emotions/memories related to family conflict. My pieces consist of thread work which relates to the concept of stitches and the constriction of two objects. My pieces mainly consist of black and white colours. Muted colours relate to how I visualise memories or ideas.

Evan

“Like I am born here, but I am not. Like I am different. Like I belong to somewhere else.”

My exhibition focuses on the feeling of “being at home,” childhood dreams and memories. It is a topic very close to my heart because it is a feeling that personally affects me. My goal as an artist is to express where I should really belong and describe my identity through the entirety of my works, expressly arranged to tell my story. My works are mostly digital to give them a more professional look with a manga touch to it. Like Takashi Murakami, my works hold references to the otaku culture.

Jeanne

My exhibition tells my short story

My exhibition tells my short story. Every stage of my life is depicted through the voyage from childhood, experiencing pain while trying to understand the world through my own eyes, and finally reaching adulthood. During this journey, one element is always present to support me: my mother. I see her as the tree of my life, powerful but also beautiful. Each piece shows a moment that marked my life. I wish to share with viewers a feeling of warmth with beauty and love I received from my mother, but also a feeling of discomfort and pain felt during challenges while growing up. I want them to relate to those experiences but also create a nostalgic feeling.

Julia

Conformity, control, and pressure

My exhibition is focused on conformity, control, and pressure I personally face, how I view it, and the toll it takes on me. Growing up, I have become aware of how society and expectations surrounding school, university and my future career have placed a large amount of pressure that controlled me and made me conform to societal norms. This includes situations such as getting perfect grades, and following certain career paths. Therefore, through my exhibition I display artworks that show how systems including that of school and society create control, pressure and conformity, I also created works that reflect the conflict of my mind and heart with regards to such factors. Most of my pieces have chaotic features to them to create an unsettling and uncomfortable mood for viewers.

My aim is for a viewer to leave the exhibition understanding how pressure to "succeed" in life controls us and makes us conform and lose our individuality. I also want them to understand how detrimental such factors can be both emotionally and mentally. My exhibition is mapped out starting with looking at ways school systems add emotional and mental pressure, control and conformity onto students, then I explore the mental side of it further, and end with looking at the emotional side.

Leah

The perception of beauty on social media

My exhibition is heavily focused on the perception of beauty on social media and how it dictates, through unrealistic beauty standards, what girls should aim to look like. Social media affected how I formed my own identity as I was constantly struggling with self-acceptance, therefore, I wanted to distort and emphasize beauty trends/standards seen on social media and fashion magazines, in order to encourage girls to feel repulsed by it, helping with self-acceptance. Some of my works are interaction pieces, this will help the viewer understand, in a non-superficial way, the meaning and emotion of my work. My overall aim is for the viewer to come away from my exhibition both understanding how certain beauty standards affect self-confidence but also to relate with the issues expressed throughout my work.

Lisa

What is and what makes a “home”

Through my artwork, I aim to embody my personal experiences and emotions towards the idea of what is and what makes a “home”. Moving from Germany to the French part of Switzerland at a young age, showed me that there are no rules or a defined definition of what “home” is. It is the space, items, and experiences that make a place a home to me. My pieces concentrate on the feeling of belonging, leaving a place I called “home” and being forced to settle in somewhere new and slowly accepting it as another home. Unacceptance turning into acceptance. I divided my exhibition into three parts that tell this story. First, I concentrated on my emotions arriving in Switzerland, feeling alone and isolated. I then started to explore it until I finally accepted it as another home.

Sanne

Impact of words

My exhibition is focusing on the impact words have on human behaviours and how these words can develop insecurities in teenagers. More specifically, my work is focusing on the silent emotion that can be seen through the eyes of the individual, including my feeling of sadness from my personal experiences. In the past, words damaged my mental health, making me feel depressed and made me doubt myself. I was too scared to tell anyone about these feelings. To ensure this message is portrayed correctly, all my pieces are either self-portraits or portraits of teenagers. My aim is for the viewer to understand the power that words have on a teenager’s mental health. I achieved this by capturing the sadness and vulnerability, using mainly black & white colour settings.

Stephanie

Memory

My exhibition is about memory, particularly those that I associate with my mum throughout my life. It expresses how some of my memories are fading and how the overall memory of her has been overshadowed by the darker memories. from when she was ill with Breast Cancer. It is also about how my fading memories have helped me heal. They are linked through the motifs of butterflies, which represent my memories themselves, the colour blue, and roses which represent my memories of her when she was ill. My aim was to show the development of my memories through my life and after she died.