I am a member of the Teen Board at the Contemporary Art Center, and we are about to make a call for artists. This is the prompt:
The CAC Teen Board aims for this multidisciplinary art exhibition to give voice to our peers, asking their reflections and experiences during these COVID pandemic. Between the fluctuations in isolation, virtual education, wavering social connections, and having pivotal social milestones erased, we seek art that reflects the ways teenagers have been adapting. How has the toll of these constant shifts to our environment, personal and global, shifted the mental health of our teen community? Between the limiting physicality of isolation for social safety, connections made because of online communities, and relationships that suffered from the lack of in-person connectivity, we seek to honor how the yearning for online and in-person community building, or lack thereof, has affected teenagers’ ability to thrive.
Above all, we seek to hear the voices of teens across New Orleans on how they have faced these changes. The opportunities, social interactions, and milestones that connect us to previous generations have been and are being cancelled. This adds to the adultification we face from our elders, as if we are self-sufficient enough to have our troubles dismissed. Our voices need to be heard.
The Teen Board wants to hear your voice. We seek to understand what you have experienced, how you have been dealing with the radical shifts to relationships, and what you have done artistically to combat or show the growth you’ve made in that isolation.
I hope to see y'all send things in!
2 comments:
The formatting is looking weird on my computer, so:
The CAC Teen Board aims for this multidisciplinary art exhibition to give voice to our peers, asking their reflections and experiences during these COVID pandemic. Between the fluctuations in isolation, virtual education, wavering social connections, and having pivotal social milestones erased, we seek art that reflects the ways teenagers have been adapting. How has the toll of these constant shifts to our environment, personal and global, shifted the mental health of our teen community? Between the limiting physicality of isolation for social safety, connections made because of online communities, and relationships that suffered from the lack of in-person connectivity, we seek to honor how the yearning for online and in-person community building, or lack thereof, has affected teenagers’ ability to thrive.
Above all, we seek to hear the voices of teens across New Orleans on how they have faced these changes. The opportunities, social interactions, and milestones that connect us to previous generations have been and are being cancelled. This adds to the adultification we face from our elders, as if we are self-sufficient enough to have our troubles dismissed. Our voices need to be heard.
The Teen Board wants to hear your voice. We seek to understand what you have experienced, how you have been dealing with the radical shifts to relationships, and what you have done artistically to combat or show the growth you’ve made in that isolation.
Hey Renee! This is really cool. I think it's important for the more artistically inclined of us teens to express ourselves, especially now when a lot of us feel cooped up and isolated from others, socially, mentally, and physically. Would you be allowed to take pictures of the art work to show us? Or will there be a website? I'm interested to see what people will create with this prompt, how they'll reflect on this year and all its ups and downs. I'm guessing they'll be a lot of mask references and phones/screen time. Or maybe someone can capture what we have missed. Maybe it'll be a scene from a past yearbook and the current students seeing what could have been. At the same time, I hope there is some joy in the art. Perhaps people connected digitally with people they had long been separated from, or they realized how precious relationships are and what we take for granted. I hope you have a fun time judging on the board and good luck!
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