Sarah

=Sarah Abdelhalim =

 IB Standard Level Art

Theme: **Consumerism and the Media**

Art extends beyond the borders of traditional media of art such as sculpture and painting. Art is in all aspects of life: food, fashion, shoes, and advertisements. My work deals with society as consumers and the use of media to entice the consumers, particularly by idealizing consumer goods. I have been influenced by visits to diverse cities, New York to Paris to Cairo, in which I have witnessed the globalization of consumerism. These cities became part of the context of my projects: modern New York City, symbolizing the media of the developed western world, and in Cairo, the classical Egyptian context based between ancient Egypt and the 1950’s, symbolizing the media of the developing world and looking into my own culture.  I have been most struck by the Pop art I have researched and then observed in Museums and the way in which it directly relates to the media and consumerism. Artists such as Andy Warhol, Wayne Thiebaud and Roy Lichtenstein have been my primary inspiration, as it is their striking artistic style and focus on the media and consumers that influenced both my painting style and focus. I was influenced by Andy Warhol’s use of consumer goods and bright colors, Wayne Thiebaud’s focus on food as a consumer good and colors that make it appealing and by Roy Lichtenstein’s use of bold lines, primary colors and simplification of objects. Rauschenberg motivated me to try image-transfer. Then German Artist Hannah Höch and French artist Jaques Villègle inspired my use of collage. Throughout the course, I experimented with different media- acrylic and oil paints, watercolor, color pencils, photographs, collage, cardboard and even shoes. As for techniques, I worked with transfer, photographs, collage, and to dripped paint. I also varied my sizes, from creating small transfers of shoes to larger-than-life popsicles.