IB Art Exhibits 2021

Post compiled by Stella Gilbert ’22.

Recently, the works of senior IB artists Ben Tolpa, Kylie Bill, Michelle Wong, and Silvy Zhou were featured in NA’s Teiger Art Gallery. Here are some highlights from the exhibit, photographed by James Worrell (faculty), with rationales written by the students. The full photo gallery of the exhibit can be found here.


Ben Tolpa

“The theme found throughout much of my work deals with the deconstruction of the physical form in order to better reveal symbolic references, experiences, and emotions that I am trying to convey (ie absurdism, dynamics between the self and society, and sensory experience). I was inspired by a variety of artists, notably Alberto Giacometti, Jun Kaneko, and Marisol Escobar whose work demonstrates a similar approach.”

Ben Tolpa ’21

Kylie Bill

“All of my pieces were centered around how growing up can give you a distorted perception of yourself; being a senior, I’m in this weird transition period between childhood and adulthood and almost as a response to entering this period of dramatic change, I use art as a vehicle to cling to and remember my childhood and the person I used to be. I wanted my exhibit to evoke a sense of nostalgia and instead of expecting the viewer to understand my experience, I wanted my art to invite the viewer to insert their own experiences and emotions into my pieces.”

Kylie Bill ’21

Michelle Wong

“For my exhibit, my main theme was to focus on my life experiences and portraying them onto my work. My main goal was to hope that viewers would reflect on their lives and the different emotions people feel.”

Michelle Wong ’21

Silvy Zhou

“This exhibit explores concepts of time, memory, and hypotheticals, specifically stopping to consider sometimes mundane elements of life. Reflecting events of the past, whether childhood memory, historical event, or recent experience, most of these pieces are explorations of new artistic and storytelling mediums, but also show a shift in my address of the real world.”

Silvy Zhou ’21

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