IB VISUAL ARTS 2025

HENRY

Curatorial Rationale

This exhibition is inspired by my experience of my IB diploma subjects: English, Chinese, Mathematics, Chemistry, Business Management and Art. I portray each subject as a different world, with me as the lone figure, evoking a sense of surrealism and grandness.

The recurring motifs include the brown coated figure, clouds, the three moons and nature. Clouds symbolise imagination; the moons represent absurdism.

The figure’s clothing is brown because that’s the colour of my school blazer. Additionally, there are references to the chrysanthemum flower, its orange hue as a reference to my Chinese inheritance, and how that has shaped my experience of education.

Architecture is a key identifier in my works, because I use the form to convey the subject that is being depicted, by using smooth curves and sharp edges to represent the accuracy of mathematics, or by referencing Chinese culture through its traditional architecture.

Some subjects feel more grounded in reality, such as business management, chemistry and mathematics, which arose from the desire to understand the world around us. While the other subjects, English, Chinese and Visual Art, are no less practical in the real world, their content feels more ephemeral to me. I aim to delineate the differences between my subjects through various distinctions: between three dimensional and two dimensional works, as in the case of chemistry and mathematics, which feature three dimensional aspects; between lens based art and two dimensional works, such as business management, and visual art which is a painting.

I explore struggle through the use of mountains as a representation of adversity to be overcome, which reflect my difficulties in studies. They also work as a background, evoking a sense of distance, like Pissarro does in his landscape oil paintings.

I chose primarily to use oil painting because I was inspired by masters, Pissarro, Monet and Magritte. I was largely inspired by the Impressionist movement, and chose to emulate their depiction of light in many of my works.

Almost all the works are of similar size to create a coherent exhibition. I chose to reflect each subject through my materials and mediums, using watercolour for Chinese, digital rendering for Mathematics, and photography for Business Management. Chemistry is much smaller than the other works because it is about peering down into the world of the microscopic.