As I started my first year in the Middle Years Programme as the Visual Arts teacher, I hoped to have students connect to their artistic selves and explore the roots of how art is, in essence, the way we tell stories. Or as my professor would say, "how history started to be recorded through time."
As I planned the unit I wasn't thinking about the goal but rather the experiences the students could gain based on who they are, where they come from, and where they aspire to be. This approach always results in diverse outcomes as every student is unique. This is the reason my profession is challenging and fascinating!
The intention was to help students develop an artistic style and purpose as they navigated traditional art and the changes through time, specifically how context changes our relationship to creativity. As the students discovered the roots of classical artistic movements, I hoped they could find parts of their identities within the style, media, technique, and composition. In this way, they could start building an artist statement that could continue to nurture their intentions in subsequent units, and perhaps even across other subjects.
Through the key concept of change, we dove into the statement of inquiry: “Change is a transformative way to recreate traditional art representations and styles.” The global context that guided this inquiry process was Orientation in Space and Time, which paved the foundations for the students to re-imagine and re-create an artwork that would represent artistic change through time and within personal artistic identities.
And so we embarked on a journey that would thoroughly explore epochs marked by Classical Art Movements rooted in strong biblical stories, merging into Botticelli's art which started to challenge boundaries by incorporating myths and revolutionizing what stories were told. We explored the symbolism used in art, and how it carried cultural perspectives. The task was for the students to be Inquirers as they wondered about diverse traditional art from their local culture to other parts of the world, perhaps even in connection to heritage. To become knowledgeable by building conceptual understanding through research across diverse traditional art purposes and methods while comparing these to contemporary artistic styles. To embrace the process of being reflective learners by considering the relationship between traditions and change in the art field, and how this builds cultural connection.
The MYP criteria also framed the development of this unit:
A- Investigation and Critique
B- Development of ideas
C- Creation, and
D- Evaluation of the creative process
This cycle creates a balanced structure of the learning process and how the components of learning scaffold as the students acquire knowledge, skills, and conceptual understandings while building dispositions that build their resilience in how they experience unexpected outcomes or challenges that could hinder the development of their ideas.
In the beginning, it was a challenge to get the students to embrace the importance of research as part of the criteria so that they would better understand the content and concepts. Getting the “buy-in” took time, and much effort during lessons and demonstrations. Eventually, their understanding came from what they saw they could produce because the investigation and planning were done. After that, amazing work started to be created!
Students understood what it means to tell stories through art considering the cultural and religious values, which brought us to the uncomfortable path of cultural appropriation. To unpack the effect of this social occurrence, we explored the work of Senegalese Artist, Kehynde Wiley, who invites us to look through the history of some of the great portraits and wonder what stories are living in the expression of the subjects, and how as artists we allow light into our compositions. Or how as artists we decide how to challenge those stories that perhaps do not show the social justice or equity we hope our world can attain.
As students planned their work and selected classical artworks that spoke to them, I challenged them to consider media they could build a relationship with and a technique to demonstrate them as artists. Students chose interesting works of art that represented part of their identity. These ranged from mythical interests to portraits that could connect to their favorite cartoon. They included exploring gender identity, and social issues. Others looked to amplify cultural heritage and social inequalities. Having the opportunity to re-create works gave students the power to adapt these stories into something meaningful and relevant to their current reality. This was in fact, a path to help us understand our humanity.
One of the students presented the work in an assembly as part of the celebration for the end of the semester. Through his words, I reconnected to my intentions and knew that the experiences I hoped the students would have were living in their artwork and their reflections on this unit. They had grown artistically and personally.
“At first a lot of the students, including myself, struggled with this task not understanding the reasoning behind why we are investigating classical art. But after investigating multiple artworks we were able to understand how much the element of art was important in representing the artist's emotion. With this information we started to plan out what classical art piece we wanted to recreate, what message we want the viewers to receive, and what type of media will represent that message and us as an artist.” -N (Grade 9)
Watching them share their work during a Mini Pop-up exhibition ignited pride for who they are becoming, whether they become artists or not. Ultimately they are humans, and my intentions as an educator hold this recognition throughout the exploration of Visual Arts exploration. I am passionate that this exploration can help us better understand ourselves, especially in an ever-changing environment.
In the words of the great thinker, Aristotle, “the aim of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
