Meraki - Senior Exhibit

I attended this senior exhibit which was meant to showcase a project where students were asked to put together a display. It would be comprised of many smaller pieces to create a larger composition. Some students used very similar images with minor differences to show the connection of the pieces in the composition. Other students used completely different images that shared a certain theme that was representative of the entire composition. The entire exhibit itself had about 6 different artworks displayed and they all told a different story. I knew a few of the artists that worked on these pieces and it was interesting to think that the inspiration for this artwork on the wall comes from the mind and imagination of people I interact with every day. Seeing an artists artwork is like taking a peek into their minds to discover something that may not be externally displayed.

One piece that I thought was interesting was composed by Kamilia. Her piece was titled, "Vixen: Heavenly Bodies Treacherous Minds". From what I understand the purpose of the piece was to combat the sterotype that women are sending a sexual message with the way that they are dressed. The heavenly bodies part of the title referred to the women which Kamilia took pictures of who were dressed in revealing and promiscuous clothing. The treacherous minds refers to the viewers, particularly men, who may be objectifying and sexualizing these women. To make the message more overt, Kamilia used short phrases on top of each image. For example, on one of the images, she had the words, "not for sale". I think the message of her collection was powerful and it was an innovative way to send a message that has been expressed for years by women everywhere.

Another piece that I found particularly interesting was by another student whose name I did not get a chance to record. The purpose of her display was to depict the personalities of her friends with different colors and amounts of chalk that she threw onto them. As she threw the chalk onto them, a camera captured a still image of them getting hit. Each color was supposed to represent a certain personality type. She used white chalk to represent how easily this personality was able to be identified in a specific person from a first interaction. If they had a lot of white chalk in their picture then that means their personality showed from the time they first met people. If there was less white, then it took people a little while to be able to associate this specific person with a certain personality trait. All of the models were photographed on a black background which really made the colors pop and i thought it was interesting to see how it came together as a sort of large collage.