Curatorial Rationale

My collective body of work has been created in order to reflect on my personal growth and development of my identity over the course of my life, particularly in regards to my personal development over this past year. In accordance, my artwork effectively helps me to locate my own artistic voice within my own personal history and culture. This body of work explores my own personal journey through life, with concepts such as hope, perfectionism, entrapment, and relationships being explored through symbolism, as influenced by external circumstances. At the beginning of last year, in the midst of everyday circumstances, I began this exploration process by reflecting on the development of my identity within the first sixteen years of my life, and how I had reached a point where I was ready to embark on my own journey in life as a young woman. A few months later, the national lockdown began in mid-March. With more time to reflect, the artwork I created continued to expand upon my personal development and identity in the midst of challenging circumstances. Despite changing external circumstances and emotions, throughout my collective body of work, I have chosen to use calming, simplistic, and centered images as well as a variety of mediums. The wide variety of mediums that I have used reflected my desire to look at a wide variety of aspects of my identity and how they impact me. Accordingly, I purposely organized my exhibition chronologically, from left to right, to show my development over the last two years, specifically choosing artworks that explore my identity and personal development within my history and culture. Therefore, this body of work is intended to probe the viewer to reflect upon their own identities, and how they have developed over time. It is also meant to also communicate messages of hope and peace to viewers, while encouraging the acknowledgment of real-life struggles in people's lives.