Bong Hoa Nho Exhibition - Light Up the Burn Out

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Bong Hoa Nho, meaning "Little Flower", is a community art project created by Bapxao, a HCMC nonprofit supporting young designers and artists. Its goal is to provide a safe space for creatives to express themselves and discuss mental health issues like burnout, anxiety and isolation commonly faced in their fields.

Through online exhibition featuring 30 local artists and workshops, the project explores themes of well-being, passion, emotions and hope. Artists channel personal experiences through various art forms. The latest online exhibition, Bong Hoa Nho SS2, has the theme "Light up the Burned Out" and is hosted in the virtual space of Gather Town. Here, viewers can wander gardens displaying the artworks and learn about contributing artists' personal stories of navigating challenges in their lives and careers.

CONCEPT

The concept draws inspiration from the technical photographic error of overexposure, reimagining its glowing effects as a metaphor for healing from burnout. Where overexposed areas were once seen as mistakes, the art direction stylizes this quality as a mesmerizing luminosity when applied purposefully to natural landscapes and subjects.

Relating this aesthetic to the theme, faces and flowers experiencing burnt out are represented by strategic overexposure, radiating with a warm glow. However, by consciously placing oneself in nurturing environments like nature , overexposure transforms from a draining state into an empowering light from within.

To convey this concept visually, photos are digitally manipulated with lighting effects in post-production. Human and floral subjects are selectively overexposed to make them stand out amid natural settings with a radiant halo.

Reddish and bluish colors are used respectively to symbolize the experience of burnout and peace - red representing the embers of exhaustion, blue the soothing waters of respite.

Featuring 30 perforated tear-away quotes from participating artists on navigating burnout, finding purpose and caring for well-being, the Bong Hoa Nho Project exhibition poster empowered visitors to literally take home words of wisdom that resonated.

By placing photos with overexposed burnout representations alongside images of calm nature scenes in complementary colors, the series aims to portray how addressing burnout issues can turn one's inner flame from consuming to guiding.

This executed aesthetic approach visually supports the theme's message that by consciously nurturing oneself, one's stressed 'overexposure' becomes a glow of resilience and renewal.