On Saturday, April 23, Ms. Morencie and Ms. Claassen’s Grade 12 Visual Arts classes ventured to Toronto to explore the Art Gallery of Ontario and to experience the immersive Frida Kahlo exhibit. As students prepare for the last Mod of the school year, they are beginning the planning process for their culminating projects. This trip was the first of its kind since the pandemic and served as an opportunity for students to admire the gallery’s collection of almost 95,000 works and gather inspiration for their own masterpieces.
This trip was made even more special as the class had the opportunity to enjoy the
I AM HERE exhibition, which included the AGO’s
Portraits of Resilience exhibition from last spring. Ms. Claassen submitted our Grade 11s’ self-portraits from last year into this online exhibition and Daniel Min '22, Cayetana Fontecha '22, Max Wenborne '23, and Oscar Hui '23 saw their names included as contributors.
Of this exhibition, the AGO writes:
“In 2021, Portraits of Resilience invited artists of all ages – from three to ninety-nine - to help us picture and reflect on our collective resilience.
It is a triumphant act to be resilient in the midst of a pandemic, social and political upheaval, and economic and financial uncertainty. The purpose of this initiative was to showcase artwork from the community, for the community, and to share how we’ve been resilient together over the pandemic experience.
We received over 3,000 submissions from people in Toronto, across Canada and around the world, including Hong Kong, Italy, the Netherlands, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States and Turkey, demonstrating our widespread desire to understand these times through art.
An archive of emotion and resilience, the exhibition includes photographs, paintings, textile artwork, illustrations, collages and sculptures, all expressing themes of solitude, pride, dystopia, community, nature and creative release.” (
AGO, 2022).
You can view the over 3,000 submissions to the Portraits of Resilience collection
online. I AM HERE is on view on the fifth floor of the AGO until August 2022.