Students of the London International Academy are sharing reflections on global culture and politics through the school’s annual International Art Exhibition.
The show opened Tuesday at the private boarding high school in downtown London, Ont. Students from all over the world are showing off paintings, drawings, photographs and films that express their innermost thoughts and feelings relating to personal experiences as well as ongoing current events.
“Everybody says a picture is worth a thousand words, and it is the truth,” said Abeera Atique, art educator and IB diploma program coordinator at London International Academy.
“Whatever an artist is feeling on the inside, that’s what you put out on your palate, and that’s what goes on to the canvas. So it’s giving the students a chance to have a voice in whether they’re missing their country and they’re expressing their culture, or whether they’re expressing an emotion. Art is the best vehicle, in my opinion, to express that.”
Kristina Orbova, 17, stands with art teacher Abeera Atique. (Angela McInnes/CBC)
Many of the students are on their own for the first time as young teenagers, Atique said, and only some are comfortable fully expressing themselves in English. Creating art is a way for them to break language barriers and connect on a deeper level.
War and striving to find peace amid conflict are common themes in the exhibit.
Kristina Orbova, 17, had started classes with Anna Semonova, 16, a mere day before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February. Orbova, from Russia, and Semonova, of Ukraine, each made paintings based on how the event impacted their friendship.
“We put in both of the artworks the unity, the support we gave to each other during these hard times,” said Orbova.
Ukrainian Anna Semonova, 16, stands in front of a painting she conceptualized when Russia invaded Ukraine. On the left is her Russian friend Kristina Orbova. Their hair is braided together to represent unity in spite of the war. (Angela McInnes/CBC)
Anhelina Yehorova, 16, came from Ukraine at the end of August. In the painting she’s most proud of, she depicts a young boy from Kherson who survived the nine-month occupation. Russian President Vladimir Putin stands behind and keeps the boy prisoner in his arms.
“I call this artwork ‘Stolen Childhood,’ because I think the boy should just play with his friends and enjoy his life at this age, not fight for his life,” said Yehorova. “And that’s why I also portrayed Putin who’s holding this boy, because he is the reason for all these sufferings, because he stole childhood from all Ukrainian kids and me.”
Anhelina Yehorova, 16, recently came to Canada from Ukraine. Her painting “Stolen Childhood” depicts a young boy from Kherson who endured a nine-month occupation of the Russian military under the orders of Russian president Vladimir Putin. (Angela McInnes/CBC)
Kazakhstani students Yaroslava Sokolova, 17, and Dana Ongdassyn, 17, took to the canvas to share pride in their cultures.
Sokolova spent two months painting a scene of three Kazakh horsemen in honour of what she called an important part of her country’s history.
“Because if we’re not going to appreciate that moment in the history, we’re just going to forget about them,” she said.
Yaroslava Sokolova, 17, worked hard painting a scene of three Kazakh horsemen. (Angela McInnes/CBC)
Ongdassyn’s work also addresses Islamophobia. She painted an image of a friend who took her own life after experiencing prejudice in France.
“I tried to portray her with [my] eyes because we were close,” said Ongdassyn, “and I tried to portray her and me together because we’ve been through a lot of stuff together.”
Dejah Pinder, 16 and from The Bahamas, made paintings and sculptures focused on the topic of racism. (Angela McInnes/CBC)
Dejah Pinder, 16 and from The Bahamas, made paintings and sculptures focused on the topic of racism. Her two most prominent pieces depict a young version of George Floyd contrasted against an image of him as a man before his death.
“I want to show that even from a young age he was discriminated against [and] the racism that was used against him was manifested even from such a young age,” said Pinder.
The 22 students featured in the show spent 200 hours in preparation, said Atique. The International Art Exhibition is open to the public at 365 Richmond Street and runs until Jan. 30.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
