I always struggled with accepting my body image and who I am. After filtering my social media influencers, whom I enjoyed, or that would benefit me somehow, I began to improve my self-love with time. It is a long process of getting to know myself and discovering new ways to love myself. During this quarantine, I reflected on beauty procedures, insecurities, social media, and how they affect us. As a consequence, I began to search even more about it. One of the books that inspired me for this portfolio was: Pare de se odiar by Alexandra Gurgel. This book shows how everyone has their insecurities and that if you do not have them anymore, you have grown from them. Thus, I figured I would do a collection of pictures of women I know, including myself. I chose five women of different ages. When photographing, I would base myself on two questions. As an answer, they had to pose, and this would be my picture. The first question was: How do you feel about your body? Please make a pose that represents it. The second question would be: How/when do you feel empowered. Please make a pose that represents it. When editing the images, I would create a background collage that would illustrate how they felt about their own body and the moment they feel empowered. I enjoyed producing this collection the most because the audience will relate their insecurities, identifying themselves in those women, and most importantly, that it doesn’t matter which is their insecurity; they know how to feel the most beautiful and powerful woman needed.

For this artwork, I decided to work with makeup. After I decided to show my creative personality and love for fashion while working with something important to me, this decision came to my mind. Makeup has a special meaning to me because, with it, I was able to learn more about myself, try new things and learn to love myself more. For this specific makeup, I inspired myself in the artistic makeups of the reality show "Glow Up," which is a TV program that I adore. Each part of this makeup looks like a meaning. I chose yellow flowers because I was inspired by Van Gogh's sunflowers and by the movie Sierra Burgess is a Loser. Through Van Gogh, I roused myself in creating a vase with thousands of flowers in it. But my major inspiration was the movie because, in it, there is a song that talks about perfection and how society created an image of ideal women and bodies. As I have suffered a lot with low self-esteem, I felt that this movie represented an old me remarkably. In the song, Sierra, which is the main character, portrays herself as a sunflower and the perfect girl as roses since, when you are in a flower shop, usually the first flower you pick up and view as pretty are the roses.

The stylist Simon Porte Jacquemus created a hashtag named #Jacquemusathome. The purpose of this hashtag is to challenge his fans, shoe lovers, and anyone else that wants to participate in it to create a high heel with what you have at home. You read it right, a high heel. Jacquemus is known for his peculiar high heels, and all around the world, people are doing the heels with candles, food, or even cellphones. As a fashion lover, I decided to embrace it and create a high heel with alcohol gel and food, which are the two elements I am using the most current. The alcohol gel has been something that is keeping us safe; it is protecting us. Food is what is keeping us alive. I decided to change the color to black and white because, unfortunately, it is something that many citizens lack during this challenging time. I chose rice and beans since they are fundamental in our daily meals in Brazil and are considered essential.

This section of my exhibition relates to gratitude. I took those pictures at the beginning of the quarantine after realizing the beauties surrounding me. At the beginning of our new atypical reality, I was not handling quarantine very well. I was sad because I was losing the beginning of my senior year, not seeing my friends, and the only thing I would do was study, watch television or stay on my cellphone. So, on a talk to my father, I was venting about not handling quarantine anymore because I wanted to contact nature. His answer was straight and simple, "Look out your window. You live in front of nature. From here you can listen to the ocean, the birds singing, watch the wind hit the leaves. You can see the entire city. What else do you want?". That was when I noticed that he was right. I had so many beautiful things in nature happening right in front of me, but that I couldn't see because the cellphone was on my way. So I began to appreciate and be grateful for all the short moments of beauty that nature provided me. My favorite became the sunset when the sun kisses the ocean.

This artwork is a tribute to my grandmothers. They always had a significant influence on my artistic side. They were artists. They loved singing, dancing and more importantly, painting. In their artworks, they would constantly draw flowers of every color. When I was able to do this bowl, it had been one year that I had lost one of my grandmothers. Feeling nostalgic, I decided to create something that would remind myself of them. I decided to include this work in my exhibition because it is emotional to me, one of my most essential pieces, and an artwork that I used a lot during this quarantine. Being unable to see my grandparents and achieving various academic goals, I missed having my grandparents nearby. In especial I missed having my grandmother that passed away by my side. I often wished she was there so I could tell her what was happening and sharing with her the results of my pieces. This is why I named it "Flor da Saudade". Saudade is a sentiment that other cultures can't understand and flor because she will always be our rose flower.

Art is the expression of human creative skills and imagination. I have found art to be an escape route, a therapy. With it, you can be sincere not only to yourself but to others. The artistic world I discovered enables me to use different features to protest, feel and create. Throughout my years in IB Visual Arts, I was able to grow and learn new techniques. Honestly, I am not the best artist in the class regarding abilities, but art is not only about its appearance. As Aristotle once said, "The aim of art is not to represent the outward appearance of thing, but their inward significance.".

My goal with my works was to illustrate my beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and stories. I wanted to put out something different, create something to which others could relate. This is why I began with self-esteem and social standards. For many years I struggled with my self-love due to the aesthetic pressure women suffer from society. After writing a lot about those feelings and seeing that others, either from my age or older, identified, I decided to embrace it and create artwork. They portray insecurities and claim that everyone is different and that we will never achieve this overrated perfection. Together with that came my knowledge of which type of tool or materials I have the ability. Being an art student who lacked technical skills, I constantly struggled to put my idea on paper. I felt imprisoned by that, which made me create works that I didn't genuinely enjoy. However, during my senior year, this changed. I began to get out of my comfort zone, exploring various cultures, techniques, other materials than canvas and paint, which led me to collages and makeup. I can be good with painting or drawing, but I know that I will never feel at home like I did with collages and makeup. During this pandemic, finding myself locked inside an apartment, my creativity ran out. I was completely blocked in the beginning and had no idea of what works I would create. That was when I found photography. I would spend hours looking at my pictures from before quarantine and miss all these emotions, all those people. So I realized how powerful an image is. I began to feel nature, enjoy the moments, and when I thought that I would wish to feel that endless happiness again, someday, I took a picture. My pieces of work created during this atypical moment reflect on the beauty and gratitude I see in small things. With this being said, in this exhibition, you will see artworks related to self-esteem, empowerment, losses, and gratitudes.

For my exhibition, I decided to arrange it by themes that are related to each other. Meaning that all works regarding women, society, empowerment, and self-esteem are together. On the other part, I have all pieces related to quarantine experiences or emotions. If I were going to prepare this in person, I would build it in a two-wall room. Each image would be printed in a different shape, with a different frame. I would do that to add dimension to my exposition so that it wouldn't be monotonous, gaining even more life. I would also add an environmental song where the lyrics would relate to my themes.

To conclude, by inspiring myself in Van Gogh's expressionist artworks and Frida Kahlo's feminist pieces of protest, I build up this exhibition. I hope that you were able to identify yourself in at least one of them. They all had the purpose of taking you out of your particular mindset to reflect on world issues.