IB VISUAL ARTS 2025

ZOE

Curatorial Rationale

My exhibition centres around the original Chinese myth, according to legend, a deity known as Yuè Xià Lǎorén is responsible for tying red threads that connect destined souls, people who are fated to meet. In Japanese folklore, this myth often appears with the thread tied to a woman’s Pinky finger. While this ancient theory has circulated for centuries, its modern popularity has resurfaced through literature, music, and popular culture.

My artworks take inspiration from this myth but reinterpreted through the lens of Taylor Swift’s Invisible String. A recurring theme in my exhibition is the use of gold, drawn directly from the lyric “one single thread of gold tied me to you.” Gold replaces the red thread, emphasising not only connection but also fate and destiny. The theory suggests that unseen forces tether individuals to places, people, and even the structures of their own anatomy. Through my exhibition, I explore how these invisible connections shape personal experience, focusing on connection to place, people and through anatomy.

Each artwork employs recurring motifs of gold, string and hands to create a visual language of connection and fate. By shifting between sculpture, painting, photography, collage, and charcoal drawings, I translate an abstract, emotional concept into a tangible form that embodies inevitability. The lyricism of Swift’s song directly inspires my centrepiece, a collage of photographs and illustrations, each representing a different lyric. This work anchors the exhibition, providing the viewer with a conceptual framework that ties together the surrounding pieces.

The artworks I selected for this exhibition fall within one or multiple of the underlying concepts of connection and fate. The most obvious connection is with another person, seen through love, family, and friendship. These bonds represent the tangible, lived experience of the invisible string, where human relationships become the threads tying individuals together. The recurring motif of hands is central to this idea, acting as literal and symbolic markers of connection. Hands hold, reach, and touch, creating bonds through physical and emotional gestures. In my work, hands represent the point of connection, most strongly expressed through my charcoal drawings, which depict the physical act of touch while also symbolising bonds of love and family. The connection of love between people is explored in my photographic diptych of two figures on opposing sides of the exhibition, reaching an arm towards one another, showing how some connections don’t need touch, but rather built upon the quiet and beautiful space between them.

Beyond interpersonal relationships, I also explore connection to place, particularly the deep tethering of an individual to landscapes that hold memory and meaning. For me, this is my grandparents’ farm, a space I frequently visit and one that feels bound to my identity. This connection is realised through my large house model and accompanying miniature painting. The house becomes more than architectural form, representing belonging, and the invisible thread that ties me to this environment. The miniature painting complements this, capturing the intimate and personal scale of memory, where a landscape of a place can be preserved and remembered. The choice of sculptural form allows for physicality and presence, while painting offers an introspective, personal lens.

Connection through anatomy is featured. Body parts are seen as an extension of human’s inner network of strings and veins, tying destiny into one’s very structure. This is reflected in my charcoal heart diptych and the ceramic sculptures of a bust and hand. In the diptych, one of the anatomical hearts is fragmented across textured surfaces, symbolising how connection is brought. The other has veins embroidered with golden thread, extending outward, transforming a biological system into a metaphor for connection and fate. This imagery flows into the ceramic sculptures, where carved cracks and vein-like lines, filled with gold flakes, expose the inner network beneath the body’s skin. Together, these works suggest that the invisible string is not merely external, binding people or places, but also internal, inscribed into the anatomy of the self.

The recurring use of gold string unifies the exhibition, symbolising connection as delicate and enduring. It becomes the visual thread linking my diverse artworks and mediums, reinforcing the idea that connection, to people, place, or self, is the central purpose and driving force behind the exhibition.