The museum started with an idea rather than an object, said the curator of their new youth art exhibition on the COVID-19 pandemic, so they did not know what they would get.
After publishing the call for submissions in May with a deadline in early July, Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum got more than 2,000 young people between the ages of four and 18 to submit art in a variety of media that poked fun at the pandemic.
“We wanted to know their thoughts and use their words in the exhibition to give us all an idea of what we have been going through because sometimes children give you an unadorned truth that is sometimes difficult to get from adults on some of these topics. . “Said Justin Jennings, lead curator of ROM.
Launched this Saturday, My Pandemic Story: Youth Create Portraits of a Pandemic features 60 of those artworks and aims to illustrate the breadth of youth experiences during these unusual times.
Jennings said that fighting was a major issue, especially among teens struggling with isolation, despair and, in some cases, self-harm, that they needed to be referred to experts at SickKids and CAMH hospitals.
“There was a lot of that deep, raw emotion that I think a lot of us were experiencing ourselves and we could imagine that the kids were coping,” he said, noting that about 40 percent of the performances came from 12 to 15 years old. -young people who tended to have a more negative outlook than others.
“But what we also received, often from the younger ones … was the issue of positivity,” he said. “A lot of people were accentuating what they really loved about the pandemic; more time with your family, or going for a walk with your dog, or seeing a rainbow, and looking at those positive elements and really emphasizing them, holding on to them and celebrating them. “
He said that even for those facing the struggle, a ‘I still get up’ mentality permeated and many of the young artists spoke in their descriptions of the therapeutic benefits of going to such dark places in their work.
Jennings said the social justice movements Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate were also refracted through much of the art, as was gender identity.
Young people who contributed their artwork to a Royal Ontario Museum exhibition opening this weekend in Toronto expressed frustration and sadness over the COVID-19 pandemic through art, but also gratitude and resilience.
“Several artists came out during the experience as transgender, and they talk about that in their art as something that they thought was very related to the pandemic, as they had additional time to reflect and seek resources about who they were,” she said. said.
Morgan Sharp / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada National Observer
Reference-www.nationalobserver.com