Concepts of Blog
Welcome back to this blog! It’s been a while, but we just finished our first humanities project for the school year—my last school year, which feels strange. Anyway, this project focused on conceptual art and dystopia, which is pretty cool. We first learned about dystopia and then what conceptual art actually is. The aim of this project was to highlight the darkness within our own society and show how it is not so different from the dystopian literature we were studying.
So, what is dystopia? Or what makes something dystopian?
Dystopia is defined as an imagined or real society characterized by great suffering, oppression, or injustice, often under a totalitarian government, environmental disaster, or technological control. To learn about dystopia, we created an annotated bibliography and read a dystopian book. The book I chose to read was 1984 by George Orwell. This was my first time reading the famous novel, and I really enjoyed it. The authoritarian and invasive government always watching you and how Winston and Julia experience the illusion of freedom before it’s all snatched away was captivating.
Once we had done some groundwork, we started choosing what we wanted to create for the conceptual art to be presented at the Winter Exhibition. The art I chose to make was a painting/collage. First, I painted a gray background on a canvas with the outline of a bird in the center. Then, I printed out a Twitter bird and glued it into the center, cutting out tweets and painting black lines everywhere around it.
What does my art represent? My artwork is meant to illustrate the invasive nature of social media—how something that was once created to spread news and serve as a tool for communication across the globe has now become a breeding ground for hate and mistrust. This fracturing of our society is represented by the black lines in the piece. I know a painting or collage isn’t super conceptual, but I thought it was a cool idea. Since I had never painted anything before and I’m not very skilled at art, it was fun to push myself and try something new. If I could do it all over again, I would definitely try to paint the bird as well, so that it is more painting and less collage. I would also make the red eye stand out more clearly, emphasizing that it is watching you. What I liked about the art I created is that the colors turned out the way I wanted.
Now, what was this whole project building towards? It aimed to answer the driving question: “How Can Art Shine a Spotlight on the Dark Sections of Our Society?” Art can highlight the darkness in our society by presenting it in a different light. Unlike conventional media such as newspapers, TV news, and radio channels, art serves as a means of communication that is not restricted by language. The biggest challenge, as with most things, is personal bias and tone, which can significantly affect art. Artists can manipulate their work to portray themselves as better or more dominant figures. For example, in the famous depiction of Napoleon’s crossing of the Alps, he is shown majestically riding a large white horse, whereas, in reality, he crossed on a mule. This highlights how he manipulated art to enhance his image. So at the end of the day what I’m trying to say is art highlights dark part in our society by providing an alternative method to communicate an idea but it is also subject to bias.
Thanks for reading
Leave a Reply