Curatorial Rational

The theme of my exhibition is to display the suffering of an adolescent during quarantine. The global pandemic affected and still affects everyone heavily due to the quarantine aspect. Being home and not seeing people has made many people’s mental health decline. My exhibition not only shows life during the pandemic but the altered lifestyle that came after the long quarantine. They include very emotional themes and use the human body to show that humans are emotionally suffering because of quarantine. However, my exhibition shows how one can turn isolation into solitude, a process that many people went through during quarantine.

My goal is to advocate for the mental health of teenagers, because I know that I am not the only teenager who’s been mentally affected by quarantine. I want the viewers to truly understand what it has been like for us over the last two years, and how it still lingers to this day. Mental health in adolescents is often overlooked and it deserves to be taken seriously. Not only am I doing this to spread awareness of the importance of mental health in teenagers after the pandemic, but to transcribe my feelings and emotions into a physical piece to organize the jumble of thoughts that go through my head. Putting together this exhibition has brought me peace of mind. When I try to open up and express myself, words usually cannot do the job. By utilizing art to express myself, I can say everything I want to say and get the message across in a visual form.

All of my pieces are based on personal experiences. In order to speak to the viewer more, I want my pieces to be authentic. The authenticity of my artwork is important to me because I can then incorporate emotion into my art. Not only does this aid the viewer in understanding my message, but it is also therapeutic to me. The self-fulfillment I gain from the art-making process is how I have been able to heal from quarantine. Creating a piece of art is almost like mapping out my emotion so I can then understand myself better. Sometimes, in order to fix the issue, you need to know what it is first, and that can be really tough when the issue has to do with your mental health. In The Mirror Speaks Volumes, I was feeling dissatisfied with myself. To take out all this stress, I tried to connect my inner emotions with the physical world by making art. I went into my bathroom and sketched the interior architecture. Back at my desk, I used my mirror to draw my side profile and I freehanded my body. This piece is a release. I channeled the dissatisfaction I saw in the mirror into a drawing, and the self-fulfillment I felt after completion helped me to combat the lack of self love I have.

I chose these specific pieces in their respective order in order to convey growth. While I do want to advocate for mental health, I also want to inspire those who are still struggling. The artmaking process has helped me mentally quite a lot, so by experiencing my exhibition, one could take away inspiration to change themselves. The exhibition revolves around being alone, but changing your situation from isolation to solitude. I started out with very somber and hectic pieces that serve to represent one's mental state during quarantine. In the pieces Isolation and Slender-Bodied Sorrow, I wanted to convey loneliness. In The Mirror Speaks Volumes and Detachment, my goal was to show the cruel thoughts that your mind possesses when you are isolated and how all the build up can lead to a panic attack. I eventually switch to more peaceful and positive pieces that show the breaking of the cycle of depression and onto a period of growth. My piece, Change of Mind, is the turning point of the exhibition and shows how the cycle of depression is broken and the first steps to solitude are achieved. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out portrays being alone in a much more peaceful way, and shows the struggles one can face on their journey to solitude. In my final piece, Solitude, which opposes Isolation, it shows a boy who is beginning to develop a love for art-making, which can ultimately lead him to solitude.