National YoungArts Week+ 2022 Exhibition

About the Exhibition

This exhibition features a selection of works by artists representing the next generation of visual storytellers and designers. These works are special gifts that have traversed time and space to present us with compelling messages from the future.

The featured artworks channel a variety of mediums that include painting, photography, ceramics, digital art, fashion, video, and multimedia. The carefully selected materials not only inform the physical shapes and dimensions of the works but also tell us about the makers. The unique processes and path of how these artists have found various ways to create their work are evident in each line of ink, a brushstroke of paint, selection of colors, an imprint or image of their very bodies within the pieces. Imagination remains the invisible, but most necessary of all the mediums that connect every artist in this collective presentation. The themes of self-exploration and soul searching are prevalent across the selected mediums as the artists bring into physical existence objects from their innermost minds. Space and place are also critical themes, explored through ideas that encourage the viewer to imagine how we might live in harmony with our physical world, ourselves, and one another – or not.

The selected works establish new paradigms and possibilities for what community, commerce, and relationships might look like pulled from visions grounded in a future reality informed by the contested present, challenging past, and the thrilling possibilities of the unknown. This visual journey continues as the lines begin to blur between space and place, while the rich variety of media utilized creates a myriad of complementary narratives that tell more than one story. The journey also turns inward with imagery pulling from the depths of personal and collective experiences that examine current events no longer serving our mental or physical well-being. To say that ‘change begins within’ is to oversimplify the infinite loop of how past and future are freshly recreated in each work of art. These works should be viewed as expressions of energy manifested from the infinite, creative source that always has, and always will, connect the collective of humanity back to itself. This exhibition of work is an experience to treasure through each viewing. These visual messages from the future have been delivered. It is up to us to receive, accept, and understand that which we have been so graciously gifted.