For my final major project, I put together an exhibition called Lost in India to show case my digital art that I produced during the 10 weeks and even some of my old work. I created this exhibition to show off how beautiful the Indian culture is. My target audience for this exhibition was people aged 16-19 and 22–45-year-old people who want to learn about the culture and that interested in the Indian culture. For this exhibition I had to create multiple art work which depicted the Indian culture after creating the art work I had to start making an advertising poster so that people knew that the exhibition was happening, after the advertising poster I had to curate the exhibition to show case my work. All of this work had to be done by the 10th of May 2022 so that people could come to visit the exhibition on the 11th of May 2022. The rest of the final major project is due on the 19th of May in 2022 which includes writing about; context (including a project proposal and brief), research, planning, production, evaluation and any extras. The reason I chose to do an exhibition was to promote awareness around the Indian culture as I personally believe that people are always looking down at it and don’t appreciate it enough.
Whilst working on my final major project there wasn’t much development to my original idea as it was an idea I was strongly attached to and it was definitely something I wanted to carry out until I had reached my original final outcome. When it came to getting ideas, I decided to make a mind map so I could pick one of my ideas that I really like and one that I think is a challenge but still achievable.
Whilst planning for my exhibition I had to create a couple of sketches for art work, and even a floor plan. Which I did not stick to as I was told that someone also had to use the room for their exhibition so I only had half of the room which worked out really well even though the other half of the room wasn’t used up in the end. To see the planning work that took place for the Lost in India exhibition click on the button below.
The theme of the project was Indian culture. To explore the culture, I started by doing some secondary research looking into Indian languages, religions and even fashion so I could portray them with in the art work. I then looked at different Indian artist to find a medium I would be able to use within my art work so that my work could be in the style of the artist. The artists I looked in to were Amrita Sher-Gill (oil painter), Harjinder Singh Sunner (digital artist) and even Y.G. Srimati (water colour artist), an additional artist I looked up was Julian Opie as after looking at his art work it inspired me to create something in his style where everything drawn is simplistic and not to detailed but still has a story. Other, secondary research that I collected through the internet was how to advertise for an exhibition, recipes for potential food and lastly fonts and typography that was used in my advertising content. Aswell as getting secondary research from different websites, I also went around collecting some primary research such as my trip to the Design Musem and to the Bristish Museum to see how they have curated art and show pieces for people to take a look at, another part of primary research I had done was going around to people to ask what stereotypes they had about Indian people and the culture as Marc Shelkin (the founder of The Social Shop) though it would be a good idea for me to face these stereotypes in my exhibition. When it came to creating an advertising poster for the exhibition, I decided to look at some exhibition posters and point out the codes and conventions so I could include them for my poster as well. The buttons below will take you to my research page and a reference page.
For my production I used the app Procreate on my iPad to create the digital art to display in the exhibition. I decided to use procreate on my iPad as it gave me more control over the brush tool than I would have had on Adobe Illustrator, another reason I had used the Procreate app is that I have more experience using and I was more confident. The process to create all the art work was similar as I had to start with an outline and then start adding details to the work. After adding the details, I would start to colour in the different sections of the of the image and then, I would add any jewellery if it was needed. Below are some images showing the process of the production for the art work named ‘The Leaning Brides Maid’.
The process to make this piece of art work started by drawing the two girls leaning against each other first. After drawing the first girl I started to think about the colours that would complement each other I decided to go for an analogous colour scheme as it was something that stood out to me and when I ever see brides, they are either wearing the same colours or colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel. After picking the colour of the dress I picked the colours of the skin, hair, lips, Bindi and even the colour of the lining of the dress. After drawing both of the woman in the picture I started to pick some shades of gold so that I could start adding the different jewellery on both the woman. One thing I debated was if I should leave the dresses plain or if I should add a pattern to them. I had decided to leave them plain as I wanted the jewellery to stand out and make it the statement piece.
What went well during the process was that I got to produce multiple pieces of art which depicted the Indian culture. Another thing that went well was the feedback wall as it allowed to get an understanding of what people thought of the work and what they liked about the exhibition. A lot of the feedback was positive with people saying stuff such as ‘My personal favourite was the protector of the door as it shows a lifestyle many people don’t get to see,’ and even ‘An amazing exhibition and explanation Jasnam. The artwork so skilled + I love the card wall! Well done.’ One thing I think that could have worked in my favour could have been to include a sense of smell and taste in my exhibition I think this could have been possible by making some cookies however I did not have the time to achieve this. To include the sense of smell I could have had lit incense in the exhibition however I had to be considerate of the smoke sensers as they could have gone off from the smoke and could have caused a chaos. Below are some more photos of the feedback I got from the visitors from the Lost in India exhibition.
In conclusion, I am happy with the outcome I have achieved for the final major project. I particularly liked the art work ‘Choti Bhaina’ as the outcome of the art work made me happy whenever I look at it and it was a favourite of many people at the exhibition. If there’s anything I would change it would probably be the location of the exhibition, the reason behind this would be because the location of the exhibition felt really exclusive and it seemed as if I was only some people knew about it. I think I should have moved the exhibition to the ground floor so that more people could see the exhibition from the outside and then come in when they got curious.
Project JASNAM 