Goodbye Spring, Hello Summer!
Jun 18, 2010
On May 21, we wrapped up a busy Biennial spring here at the Whitney with a Youth Insights celebration. Hosting an audience of more than eighty, including friends, families, and teachers, the evening marked the end of our YI Artists and YI Writers spring semester programs and our year-long YI Leaders program. We celebrated the end of the year with an exhibition of all the artwork the students created. Be sure to visit the YI Flickr photostream for more images from the evening's festivities.
YI Artist Seon uses disposable contact lens containers to create a found object sculpture, May 2010.
Working with 2010 Biennial artist Aki Sasamoto, YI Artists learned about the history of performance art and experimented with different materials, including their bodies, as tools for making art. Drawing on what they learned from Aki and other performance artists, including Tino Seghal and Marina Abramovic, YI Artists created several projects throughout the course of the semester. They worked with many different media, from found objects to film to papier-mâché, using their own personal experiences and inquiries to guide their artistic processes and journeys.
YI Writer Nancy responds to war with a work that incorporates image and text, May 2010.
Working with 2010 Biennial artist Nina Berman, YI Writers began the semester developing their own definitions of war, whether it involved conflicts between nations, battles between human beings and nature, or opponents in a board game. Looking at the work of artists like James Casebere and Zoe Leonard, YI Writers also explored different modes of storytelling and ways of sharing “truth.” For their final projects, YI Writers used text and images to convey their own interpretations of war.
YI leaders celebrated the end of their year and the end of the Biennial with another showing of their short documentaries, which were also screened at the NYC Festival of Young Artists and Leaders on June 5.
As we say goodbye to an eventful Biennial spring here at the Whitney, we say hello to an exciting summer with the YI Summer Intensive and upcoming exhibitions. For more information on upcoming teen programs, including application guidelines for YI Fall 2010, please visit the Whitney’s teen page.
By Diane Exavier, Assistant to Youth Programs