Teacher Name: Haydee Lopez
Grade: 12
Materials: Gouache
Description: As an artist, I acknowledge some of my culture’s dark undertones such as machismo and government corruption. Although I love my culture, I feel like I should also portray its flaws to change them. My piece, “September 26, 2014,” depicts the Mexican police’s 2014 kidnapping of 43 innocent boys whose parents still don’t know what happened to them. Many people believed that the kidnappers sold the boys to drug cartels who are using them to grow poppies to produce heroin. To raise awareness about this forgotten incident, I use poppies to represent the 43 boys, suggesting that the kidnapping happened because of Mexico’s drug trade. I use acrylic gouache to create the poppies for “September 26, 2014” and an exacto knife to create negative space around them.
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