The theme of The Body was inspired by the book Wonder by R.J. Palacio, which is about a boy with a severely disfigured face. I asked students these essential questions as we looked at a variety of contemporary and historical examples of art and design: How have artists and designers used the body as a subject, as a canvas, and as inspiration throughout art history and in contemporary art? How do we view ourselves both inside and out? How do our bodies define who we are and how we experience the world? What does the word profile mean today i.e. a bio page on a social media site or racial profiling? Students reflected on how they see themselves, how others see them, and how they want to be seen and explored how their bodies take up space and interact with the world both in the physical and virtual realms. We looked at Piero della Francesca’s Duke and Duchess of Urbino among others and read Pablo Neruda’s poem To the Foot from Its Child and discussed his use of metaphor. Students wrote and illustrated their own poems about a body part changing over time, going through the stages of life, aging, and eventually dying. The students grasped the concept of the life cycle and had a sense of renewal in their work, while others ended their poems quite morosely. Cheeks became cherry blossoms, hands/trees, fingers/soldiers, hair/tentacles and coiled snakes. I have to admit I was brave to embrace the theme of the body with middle schoolers; fortunately, the students were very appropriate in addressing the subject matter.
© 2020 Yael Kupiec-Dar
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All rights reserved. Please don't use, reproduce, re-post or alter artwork and images without written permission.
Artwork is an intellectual property and is protected by copyright law.