This year, Art Students deeply questioned their relationship with different cultural aspects of their lives, such as religion, consciousness, femininity, and even survival in an apocalyptic world.

As described by Upper School Art Teacher, Mr. Sean Buckley, the International Baccalaureate Visual Arts course encourages students to challenge their own creative and cultural expectations and boundaries.

The IBVA Exhibition is the final work that you do in the IB Class of Visual Arts and it is the result of this two-year course.

The Students gave tours around the exhibit to different members of the Community. One of the artists, Isabella Ochoa, shared how deeply explained her exhibition in an interview. Learn more below!

Isabella Ochoa

My theme is centered around religious interpretation. I am not trying to criticize the Catholic Church, just trying to highlight that we ignore several negative aspects because of our devotion.

At first, I was doubting whether to do this theme because it can be very controversial, but it’s part of art to receive emotion and some negative comments.

Throughout my life, I’ve struggled a lot with my relationship with religion, whether to believe or not. After this exhibition… I was able to put it into an art and not only words, and it made me realize that I do have to rethink where I stand. Today, my relationship with God is a little bit closer.

Isabella confesses that this exhibit brought with it positive things.

“I thought I was gonna get a lot of criticism, but it did not happen because people were able to put themselves in my shoes”.

“Mr. Sean, my Teacher, helped me understand that I was very good with this idea of satire and art. He was able to guide me and encourage me when I was doubting myself”.

According to Isabella,  the diversity of Students at ASF allowed her to put herself in other’s shoes, and this gave her the tools to think about what her stand is. It’s clear to her that there are diverse and open people at our School in terms of ideology.

If you would like to see more, don’t forget to see the photo gallery below!