Culture and Conflict, Volume 17: Know Hope

Conflict, 7th Grade:

Taking a break from the chess boards for a bit, we began studying one of our masterworks today. Know Hope is a street artist creating works primarily in Israel. While his website gives a good sampling of his gallery installations, his true genius lies with the art he creates in the context of surrounding conflict. This Google image search ("know hope" art) shows his more powerful works.

In the context of the conflict project, the students are exploring chess as a metaphor for two ideas being unable to occupy the same space at the same time. Know Hope's art is a thought-provoking juxtaposition of hope and conflict, painted directly on the physical evidence of that conflict, to be pondered and appreciated by the everyday participants of it.

Exploring the same ideas of juxtaposition, the students will be creating a piece of art to represent their conflict of study. Each student chose an image of their conflict, and traced the image onto translucent vellum paper. The image will then be enhanced with watercolor, and finally affixed to a page of text in such a way that the text shows through.

Here are some of the designs in progress. The students chose some really powerful imagery, and the final pieces should be pretty impressive when they're finished.

All Culture and Conflict posts can be found under the topic heading: Diversion Audit.

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