\n<\/b>Arts and Entertainment Editor
\nMunira.Alimire1651@mb.rctc.edu<\/p>\n
![\"RCTC](\"\/echo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Ekhlas-Abdullahi.jpg\")
Ekhlas Abdullahi<\/p><\/div>\n
Ekhlas Abdullahi is a sophomore in high school and a part-time PSEO student who paints whenever she has a free moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince second grade, I\u2019ve been sketching whenever I needed something to do with my hands. I\u2019ve always had a bit of a low attention span at times \u2013 it was a great way to be productive,\u201d she admitted, laughing a little.<\/p>\n
She thinks of her art as working both as a representation for people who are traditionally overlooked and as opposition to the beauty standards we hold ourselves against.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see beauty in everything,\u201d she said, \u201cso I enjoy drawing objects and people who aren\u2019t considered traditionally beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abdullahi hopes to inspire people who feel as if they are inadequate, incapable or unworthy because of the way they look, to learn to love and accept themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cI once didn\u2019t appreciate myself because I never saw anyone who looked like me. I hope that by sharing my art with others, they\u2019ll be able to feel represented.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her desire for equality is reflected in her career interests \u2013 she\u2019s taking a criminal justice course and is interested in the American legal system.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m most inspired by other powerful female artists of color, like Frida Kahlo, who doesn\u2019t fit our ideals of beauty,\u201d she said, \u201cBut with that, it shows her art to be all the more beautiful as we\u2019ve removed ourselves from considering her merit to be her looks.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked about her community of artists, she said it didn\u2019t have many people who didn\u2019t focus on merely aesthetic value, or they shared nothing in common. She shares her art with her friends in real life and online, as they understand the meaning behind her art.<\/p>\n
She would one day like to have an art showcase where she can share both her visions for the future as well as her paintings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Student sees her art as going against traditional standards of aesthetics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}