Student Profile: Ninah
For AP 2D Design, students are required to create a body of work based on a year long sustained investigation. They pick an area of inquiry and then experiment, practice and revise their craft and process over the course of a school year. They are also required to show synthesis of ideas, materials and processes. This approach to the AP 2d design portfolio was introduced in 2020, and it requires a high level of work and thinking of high school artists. I was concerned that it would be too difficult for teenagers, but my students quickly proved me wrong. In fact, Ninah’s Selected Works portfolio is posted on the AP website as an example of a perfect portfolio: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap21-2d-art-and-design-selected-works-score-5.pdf?course=ap-art-and-design-program. Here is Ninah’s AP Statement—students have a specific number of characters to describe their question and to prove in writing how they experimented, practiced and revised their work. Ninah’s sketchbook, mindmaps and research really guided her into thinking more deeply about her process and her subject matter.
“Inspired by my upbringing—my parents coming from families with opposiing socio-political views living in opposing regions of teh East Coast and sharing a Black and Filipino heritage, I used photographic techniques to explore enulturation and how your experiences shape personal idently. In images 1-7 I focused on how my familial factors such as race and family dynamics shaped some of my earliest and strongest beliefes. I used opacity and layers to show how these early imprints of family history in our lives are deeply rooted and complex. Images 11-15 expand the development of personal identity to include the influence of outside factors, such as fashion, politics and spirituality. I incorporated different styles of handwritten texts and utilized more vibrant colors to emphasize the diversity and originality that such facotrs add to our experiences. The juxtaposition betwen my low-key lighting and color in earlier images and the brigt vivid color in images 9-15 mirror the journey of personal identities—from the foundaiton of our early environments through the evolution that occurs as we encounter others in the world.”
