Young Blood Art Exhibition

Art pieces from fourteen young Belizean visual artists are currently on display inside the Image Factory on North Front Street. The exhibition, entitled Young Blood Art Exhibition, was curated by Zaadia Flores, an Art Instructor at Saint John’s Junior College. We stopped by the exhibit ahead of its official opening tonight to learn more about the pieces and the artists behind them. Flores told us more.

Zaadia Flores

Zaadia Flores, Curator, Young Blood Art Exhibition

“When it comes to the inspiration for the artist, it varies. Some of them are a little bit more into expressing color, expressing techniques, while some are more into self expression. So, you will notice a couple art works are focused on colors, are focused on the meanings behind the types of colors and the colors themselves.

Mister Samir Habet, he tends to focus a lot on expression and the facial expressions of people. So, when it comes to his art work he focuses, he is inspired a lot by street art and graffiti and he tries to capture that in the backgrounds of his paintings and in the fore grounds he tends to capture the expressions of people. So there is a sense of happiness in some, sense of longing and sadness. So each piece has a varying emotion and it is up to the viewer to interpret that emotion. The artist Ms Tiara Glenn is a current student at SJC and she focuses a lot on technique. She focuses on the patterns in brush strokes, the colors and capturing a sense of realism in her art work. My artwork itself focuses on interpretation by humans. So, all my artwork are abstract in a sense, so it is up to the viewer to  interpret the art based on their personal experiences, their feelings, so someone might interpret a piece as a flan inspired piece, but someone might interpret it as a galaxy. It is all up to the interpretation of the viewer. It is really important for the artists to see that support from the locals here in Belize because as artist we tend to feel very isolated when it comes to our art work. We are usually alone, painting, doing our photography. So, seeing people come out and appreciate our art work, give you feed back, helps you realize you are appreciated that your art work is not just in vain for yourself but it is supported by people.”

The pieces will be on display for the next several days.