The IB Visual Arts Exhibition took place last week. Students presented a selection of their best work in the form of a curated final presentation.
The Visual Arts IB Diploma Programme is a two-year course that encourages students to challenge their own creative and cultural expectations and boundaries. It enables students to develop analytical skills in problem-solving and divergent thinking while being thought-provoking and building students’ technical skills and confidence as art-makers.
In the first year of the program, students explore various themes as a class before selecting a theme to focus on for the rest of the program. In addition to exploring and comparing visual arts from different perspectives and in different contexts, students are expected to engage in, experiment with, and critically reflect upon a wide range of contemporary practices and media.
The Visual Arts Exhibition accounts for 40% of the students’ final grades. The final exhibition is the culmination of the students’ IB Art experience. Students lost a significant amount of time as a result of school closures due to Covid and civil unrest, however, they have persevered throughout the course.
“The artwork expresses ideas from themes student's have chosen to explore within their artmaking. They have lost a lot of time due to Covid and the conflict, but are pushing through here at the end to finalize all of their pieces.” - Aaron Cantu, Visual Art Teacher
“The theme I chose to focus on was rap culture. Rap is a part of my everyday life because I always listen to rap music. I chose this theme because I am interested in this theme because I want to represent rap culture in different forms. I drew two artists in two different ways and also made an interactive art piece to show rap culture.” - Daniel, HS student
For more information about the IB Visual Arts Exhibition, please contact Aaron Cantu at aaron.cantu@icsaddis.org.