AP Art of the Week
Spotlight on Artist Endryval Camba
Welcome to The Elective’s digital art museum, dedicated to the incredible work of AP Arts students. This week we feature an illustration made by Endryval Camba from Cypress Bay High School in Weston, Florida.
Welcome to The Elective’s digital art museum, dedicated to the incredible work of AP Arts students. Each week we highlight a work or series created in one of the AP Arts concentrations—AP 2-D Art and Design, 3-D Art and Design, and AP Drawing (the AP Program also offers Art History and Music Theory)—as well as a statement from the artist (and, occasionally, their teacher).
From the first cave paintings to contemporary breakthroughs in virtually reality, art, in all its forms, has been a crucial way for people to process, make sense of, comment on, and grapple with the world around them. In 2020, there is a lot to process and grapple with—and AP Art students have risen to the challenge. The work many of them submitted in their final portfolios is explicitly of the moment, from commentary on the covid-19 pandemic to the celebration of people of color to the nature of heroism in perilous times.
The work is often challenging and provocative but always insightful, inspiring, and expansive.
This week we feature an illustration made by Endryval Camba from Cypress Bay High School in Weston, Florida.
Here’s Endryval’s statement on the work:
"The inquiry that guided my sustained investigation was, 'How can I represent the emotional and physical struggle of women into becoming a more “perfect version" of themselves?' One place women confront this is in magazines, and after capturing images of a doll, model, and other materials, I used Photoshop to combine them with text to create an ironic and sarcastic magazine cover.
"My investigation also experiments in bringing light to issues that young women face when they are surrounded by unrealistic expectations of how they should look through the thoughts of a young, innocent girl. For example, the curiosity of a child with wanting to be a 'perfect' or 'ideal' individual, or an unhealthy obsession with being thinner or perform surgical operations to increase beauty. A Barbie can be a representative or common toy that influences girls in this way as it often fits a 'perfectionist' ideal. A young girl starts off playing with the toys, but later grows obsessed with wanting to look like the dolls herself. She eventually grows to become 'encompassed' with those unhealthy thoughts and is defeated in trying to escape them."
And here are more images from Endryval’s portfolio:
Took an image of a girl surrounded by dolls to show defeat and red string representing a connection. It creates a dramatic tone with a new, unique angle where a girl feels surrounded by icons of beauty.
To express the dissatisfaction a woman may have with her body and the extremes of achieving beauty.
Used external lighting to achieve a dramatic effect, then edited the image to increase vibrance and highlight doll. It symbolizes an internal struggle of women changing regular habits to suit unrealistic expectations.
Student statements are lightly edited for length and clarity.
