Showcasing Talent at the IB Senior Art Exhibit

The Village School hosted its annual IB Senior Art Exhibit in the new Village Athletic Center on Tuesday, April 2. During the event, seniors in the IB Visual Arts class had the opportunity to display art pieces that they have been working on throughout the two-year duration of the course.

“The art show this year was very organized and professional,” senior Sofia Rivera said. “Everyone had their own space that was separated from the rest. I liked that we got our own walls and that we were able to pick how we wanted our space to be organized.”

For the exhibit, the IB art students were required to display a certain number of pieces, depending on the level of rigor of the class they were taking. For Standard Level (SL) art students, students were required to have 4-7 pieces with exhibition text and a rationale of 400 words maximum. Higher Level (HL) art students were required to have 8-11 pieces with rationales of up to 700 words. 

“I had spent a considerable amount of time on each of my pieces - from 10 to 36 hours -  for a total of 11 pieces,” senior Daksha Pathak said. “This range is quite large because I took less time to complete pieces that used mediums that I was comfortable with, for example, acrylic paints, whereas I took significantly more time for pieces that used mediums that I had never used, such as fabric paint and tape.”

Artwork made out of college pamphlets created by senior Gabriela de Castro. (Photo: Kira Kemp)

Each of the pieces seen at the exhibit were visual representations of the technical accomplishments of the students. The flexibility of the IB Visual Art curriculum requires to students to experiment with various mediums and techniques in order to express messages and themes that were close to heart. 

“The connecting thread between all of my pieces was the concept of feminism, specifically dealing with women’s struggles and empowerment,” Pathak said. “Some of my pieces showcased the physical and mental imprisonment of women through the means of societal traditions, the unfortunate truth of the victims of sexual assault, and women’s lifelong struggle of reaching the status of men in society.”

For the seniors that will be graduating this spring, the IB Senior Art Exhibit offered the opportunity to truly to come to terms with the ending school year and the future ahead of them. 

“The IB Art Exhibition made me realize how much work each, and every one of us had put into all of our pieces over the course of 2 years,” Pathak said. “And since this exhibition marked the last step in our IB Art class, it also made us realize how close we are to graduating.”