Curatorial Rationale

For my IB Art exhibition, I have chosen to explore my personal connection to my Jewish identity. Coming from a mixed family, I have always felt intertwined in many different spheres of culture and tradition. Starting the entire exhibition process directly after a month-long trip to Israel, I decided to delve deeper into my relationship with Judaism, applying many cultural symbols and traditional settings within my artworks. Throughout my trip to Israel, I recorded much of what I saw through photographs that I later used as an important foundation for inspiring the art I wanted to create. Often, the inspiration translated into observational pieces that allowed me to use the photographs I took abroad as points of reference to assure that my art was as accurate as possible and capturing the essence of the subjects to the greatest extent possible. However, observational works based on photographs from Israel were not the sole component of my exhibition. I also included pieces that were directly related to my life. This allowed me to hold a contrasting perspective from my other artworks as I began to analyze aspects of Judaism that were already present in my life in America rather than aspects of the culture I had only recently began to grow to love after my trip to Israel.

The organization of my gallery is based on the aforementioned shift in perspective I underwent while curating my IB Art exhibition. My first few artworks in the slideshow are all observational pieces which depict real settings from Israel. The remaining artworks after those begin to explore Judaism within my own life and how I personally relate to it. My first three pieces are labelled Negev Desert, Negev Desert 2, and Negev Desert 3. They are all individual works that depict settings which I photographed while in the Negev Desert in Israel. I also organized them in a way that almost seemed like a timeline. In Negev Desert, the two hikers are overlooking a sunset just beyond the desert mountains. Then in Negev Desert 2, the two hikers have continued to hike; however, the sun has risen and it is obvious that it is now the middle of the day. Lastly, in Negev Desert 3, no hikers are present because it has turned to nighttime, and the lack of humans reinforces a peaceful aura along with the dark tones which are consistent throughout the artwork. The next artwork in the exhibition is Red Canyon which is another observational piece that I used watercolor to create. The use of watercolor was vital in the composition because it allowed me to highlight certain aspects of the art which aid the viewer in navigating what exactly it shows. For example, the wet on wet technique/circular brush stroke motion gave the sky a softer touch. Additionally, to create the different tones and textures of the rock in the canyon, I used light base layers with different quantities of water in them to achieve my desired effect.

The last three pieces of my IB Art exhibition begin to focus on my personal connection with Jewish culture at home, or simply within my own life, without outside environmental contributions. My piece Deconstructed Star highlights the multidimensional nature of my heritage through a variety of colors and textures from the magazine cutouts of the collage. The last two artworks in the exhibition are digital photomontages created using photos that mostly all come from within my own house. Bar Mitzvah analyzes the importance of familial relationships in relation to Judaism meanwhile the piece Hanukkah Table focuses on Jewish holidays and how I celebrate them at home.

Regardless of background, an absolute sense of identity is hard to attain for most adolescents. Curating this exhibition has personally helped me find a sense of belonging and urged me to explore my identity to greater extents. As the audience views my exhibition, I hope they learn to recognize different elements that define themselves whether it be the environment surrounding them or the people they surround themselves with. In addition, I hope the audience learned something new about me and can use that information as inspiration to create their own forms of self expression through any medium in the future.