Guernica

PBL: Guernica Project

The Guernica Project is based upon Guernica by Pablo Picasso. It became a powerful anti-war symbol during the Spanish Civil War and afterwards, where it would continue to be a major piece regarding world conflict. In our classes, we chose conflicts relevant to ourselves and created our own paintings on a panel inspired by the abstract shapes in the original artwork.

My group's conflict of choice was violations of and the fight for human rights, combining our own separate topics of women's rights, healthcare, worker's rights, gun violence and transgender rights + freedom of expression. I worked with Amelia Vinson and Ceniya Hilton.

A majority of our classes became involved in this project. Chemistry, Geometry, World Literature and ChemVAS were the primary ones. In Chemistry, we illustrated renditions of the subjects in Guernica using color theory based on emotion and the shape language of neurotransmitters to explore the chemistry behind the emotions the piece elicits, and we also created some of the purple paint that was utilized in the final product. In World Literature, we researched propoganda posters, public service announcements and learned to write a persuasive essay on our chosen topics, and World History highlighted propoganda's usage in wartimes to rally civilians and soldiers and indoctrinate the public. ChemVAS itself was where we completed our final paintings in groups.

Propaganda Posters

Propoganda is the usage of embellished or otherwise untrue information as a means of promoting a cause, whether it be good, bad, major or trivial. It has been used for centuries and has only grown more prevalent in the information age, and can be utilized for any topic as long as you have something convincing enough to promote or discredit it with. You likely encounter a lot of propoganda in your daily life, and the prevalence of advertising links back to propoganda as well.

Propoganda is relevant primarily in our Literature and History classes, though it also came up in our art classes as well- with ChemVAS being one of the primary classes the Guernica project had been based in.

In World Literature, we were tasked with creating a propoganda poster, either with Canva, generative AI or hand-drawn, in order to raise awareness for a topic of our choice that would later play into our Guernica project.

My topic was transgender rights, and I chose to draw it myself using Procreate. The character design came from my Drawing, Painting & Digital Design class' POWER project, where we designed a hero based on ourselves and our personal values.

Public Service Announcements

Continuing on our propoganda unit, we also created PSAs based on another topic of our choice. Public Service Announcements are more specifically information-centric and generally truth-based than direct propoganda, however do often employ similar tactics such as exaggeration, slogans and direct emotional appeal to the viewer as a call to action. They can be used as a form of propoganda but are not directly propoganda themselves.

This PSA is centered around gun violence. I worked with Caliyah, Nickya and Anaysa.

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