Hello and welcome back to my blog! Today I’m here to talk about a project we recently completed in Humanities on Dystopic Art, where we took the idea of creating conceptual art and combined it with the dystopian topics. This eventually ended with the creation of our winter exhibition projects which you can see below but continue reading for the process!

We started off this project by doing a small launch activity to remind us of what conceptual art is before completing a short analysis. We were tasked with finding a piece of conceptual art to observe through a visual, contextual, and personal reflection. To challenge myself I chose I image that did not have much context allowing me to really see into the bigger picture of what the art entailed. You can read more about this process, my observations and thoughts below

At the same time, we began to dive right into the key underlying idea within this project, Dystopia. We did this through reading a dystopian novel of our choice, I decided to read β€œThe Handmaids Tale” by Margaret Atwood. I chose this novel because of its accuracy and extreme presence in our world today. This novel explores themes of restricted freedoms, dehumanization, surveillance, propaganda, reproductive control, totalitarianism, etc. This is all seen through the perspective of Offred/June, the protagonist of the novel. It follows her life in the futuristic dystopia of GIlead, an oppressive regime that views her, and all other fertile women as a β€œnational resource”. During the time I read this novel, I made sure to take extensive notes when I viewed characteristics of dystopia, distrust of the natural world, symbolism, literary devices, and real-world issues. Take a look at these ideas more in depth by reading my connections and analysis here:

This brings us to what you saw a sneak peak of at the top of this post, our conceptual art. We started off by creating a blueprint of our project idea. Personally, after reading β€œThe Handmaids Tale” I knew I wanted to include to show the extreme governmental control that Margaret Atwood portrayed so well. My blueprint included my artist statement, aspirations, how my audience will be engaged, and the planning of it all. After some brainstorming I came up with this:

In order to bring our idea to life, we completed an annotated bibliography with five sources that supported our topic. I was able to find lots of articles responding to reproductive rights, post Roe v. Wade, and connections to The Handmaids Tale. These gave me a sturdy base of facts to support my conceptual art before creating.Β 

Once it was time to create, I got my materials and started to build. I decided to freestyle the 3D heart which involved lots of experimentation with different coloured wire, shape, and size. After some trial and error I was able to move on to my next experiment which involved knitting the rose. I feel this was a very important aspect of my art because its what truly brought the themes between the novel and the real world aspects to life. I am happy to say I was able to bring my idea to life, however I was hit with the sickness going around our grade and was unable to participate during the winter exhibition. Despite this, I found a way to ensure my art was still present and with the help of some peers it was.Β 

Throughout this project I was able to work on My Learning Vision, Mission, and Values by building my communication and agency skills. I accomplished this by asking for feedback both from peers and teachers. This included going into tutorial for extra help when needed.

Overall, I feel this was a successful project! I was able to combine dystopia with conceptual art to communicate and inform others on the fight for freedoms and access to reproduction rights through the perspective of β€œThe Handmaids Tale” and its relevance today. Bringing these topics together was a super interesting experience. Despite the few bumps in the road I was able to overcome the challenge to fully embrace this project and the final product. I hope you enjoyed reading about this project and maybe you even learned something new. However, before you log off, what do you see when you view my conceptual art?

-Makenna