This summer I returned to Amsterdam to make art, catch up on blogs, and to take a course at the Vrije Universiteit called Decolonizing Europe: History, Memory, Redress. It was an intensive course with students from all over the globe (South African to Poland to Los Angeles and more), 5 professors as well as visiting lecturers, and up too 100 pages of reading per night. The course helped me see how the colonization of the past structures our present.
My research led me to be interested in the topic of aesthetics, specifically decolonizing aesthetics. This post is based on a PowerPoint on the topic.
(* signifies a link to papers and resources that will be at the end of this blog)
I started with the questions:
What makes you?
What do you make?
I did this in order to position my peers and professors as makers, and to have them consider themselves as objects/people who are influenced by the structures around them.
I then showed them this image to have them place their own idea of universal in the present :
Take a look at this object, and consider it.
Who made this object?
Who did they make it for?
What about it is universal?
What about it is not universal?
In 2018 I received a grant from the school where I work (the Cambridge School of Weston) to study social design in the Netherlands. This research has brought up many questions about how to make education in the arts and design more equitable and relevant, which led me to this course.
I found many people and projects that pointed towards new paradigms in design education, but here are two that sparked the question about aesthetics for me.
First was learning about Christian Benimana and the African Design Centre from an interview he did with the Social Design Insights podcast*.
Benimana was born in Rwanda, but went to China in order to get an architectural education as there were no architecture schools at that time in Rwanda. He returned to open the African Design Centre to educate African students in a way that suited African needs and cultures. He specifically wanted to move beyond Africa’s colonial architecture. Traditional Western ways of educating architects did not make sense for the fast growing continent. The African Design Centre is a 3 year program allowing for a quicker education to meet this fast growth. They value working with local knowledge regarding materials and craft, collaborating with the stakeholders, and considering “social, economic, and environmental impacts of the built environment,” including climate change.
Benimana is rethinking design and architectural education where its exclusivity, and Western paradigms of aesthetics and design education are no longer serving the students, or the community, neither locally nor globally.
In my research it seems architecture education as a field is much further in this conversation than in the visual arts field.
The second stimulus towards new paradigms in design education was a book by Ruben Pater, The Politics of Design. In clear and concrete terms, Paters shows why elements of academic Western design are not universal, and can lead to a break down in communication.
I started to think about how this applies to the visual arts.
Having been trained in a Western visual arts tradition, I knew I was the fish who can’t see the water it swims in. I want my students to be aware of their "water", of aesthetic decisions and structures, along with the histories and implications of these decisions.
Mundo donde quepan muchos mundos
(from Zapatistas, the idea of “creating a world where many worlds fit”)
-Decolonizing Design
The idea of the universal in design has historically been about Western and European aesthetics and definitions. Concepts follow the movements and ethics of colonial history.
In an attempt to be able to see and reveal these patterns in my teaching, I considered these questions:
How do we crack open the idea of the universal to make room for pluralities?
What is and is not art vs. craft (with its class and cultural implications)? And does it matter? (Maybe more important, is what is behind the initial separation of the two?)
Who does the defining (with it's implications about positions of power)?
And how do we encourage students to look to their own communities and selves for knowledge?
I’d like to start with a contemporary definition and history of the word and idea of aesthetics. Here is one definition:
aesthetics | esˈTHediks | (also esthetics) plural noun [usually treated as singular] a set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty, especially in art. • the branch of philosophy that deals with the principles of beauty and artistic taste.(1)
Greek in origins, aesthetics originally related to the idea of perception through the senses. At its origins, Mignolo and Vasques consider the concept was not yet a Western concept, as Europe was “just a vague geographical idea related to mythology”.(2)
Immanuel Kant, and his gravesite in Konigsburg (images from Wikipedia)
During the Enlightenment, Immanual Kant redefined the meaning of aesthetics, and the concepts that it encompasses, that became what I was taught when I was in art school:
“Philosophical aesthetics becomes the theory of the beautiful and the sublime, and the theory of artistic genius. Art (from Latin ars), which means simply skill, derived from poiesis, which in Greek meant to make, becomes coupled with aesthetics: the skill of the genius to make artistic objects embracing beauty. “ (3)
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The theory of the genius is another part of this, and is a problematic myth with relations to power dynamics as well, but for another lecture. If you are interested read Linda Nochlin’s Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists. (4)
Another Enlightenment based definition of aesthetics, by Edmund Burke (Irish statesman), is more specific with good aesthetics being(5):
(1) smallness; (2) smoothness; (3) gradual variation of direction in gentle curves; (4) delicacy, or the appearance of fragility; (5) brightness, purity and softness of colour.
It was hard to read this, and not think that the aesthetics of passivity is pleasing to Western man.
So, it’s important to locate this idea as having an origin in a time and place, that put it in the position to be part of the canon of Western culture, and therefor part of imperialism which spread through colonization. Mignolo and Vasquez believe that through this locating, ideas “therefore lose claim to universality.” (6)
In an article by Mirjam Shatanawi a curator at the Tropenmuseum, she writes about the Western world’s portrayal of non-Western cultures as “silent" cultures, there to be observed but not speak. (7)
The dominance of Western aesthetics can also be seen as a way of denying the expression and histories of colonized peoples. It manifests Glissant’s (8) non-history, and the adds to erasure of the collective memory.
This erasure and silencing is not done without damage.
Yinka Shonibare, (the text on the desk reads “you can’t trust nobody”) speaks to the idea that the Western colonizer view is assumed to be and taught to be universal.
This brings us to a word that comes from those working to decolonize aesthetics.
aestheSis
(the S and T are often capitalized for clarity as the words are similar)
Decolonial aestheSis is a naming and articulating of practices that challenge and subvert the hegemony of modern/colonial aestheTics.
In the movement to decolonize aestheTics, "aestheSis" is a word used to challenge the limitations of Western views of what can and can’t be beautiful, or pleasing to the eye, and to include specific places and cultures as part of the conversation.
While ‘aestheTics’ became the Western norm, with aestheSis, ideas of beauty and sensibilities reflect distinct locales, differences, as well as over-lappings.
It allows for a conversation about the meetings of cultures.
In my research, the idea of the relationship between art and healing particularly interested me as I have been considering this idea in my own practice. In a conversation with friends, I asked if all art was ultimately about healing. A simplification to be sure, but it is a question I often come back to.
Colonialism left wounds, both visible and invisible.
Walter Mignolo considers the idea of decolonial aestheSis as both acknowledging the wounds, and moving towards healing while recognizing the “the dignity of those aesthetic practices that have been written out of the canon of modern aestheTics”. (9)
Four important aspects of decolonial healing according to Mignolo are:
· the recognition of being formed by the colonial concept of aesthetics
· the idea that healing is a communal enterprise (which also challenges the Western myth of the artist as individual genius)
· that it is helping a person survive within their marginalized communities
· that the ultimate goal is not being an art world “success” (again tied into Western myth of genius), but to do the work of de-colonizing, so that art becomes an agent of change (10)
Suzanne Césaire, a Martinique born writer, anti-colonialist and feminist, refers to surrealism as “a permanent readiness for the marvelous.” (11)
This quote points to the role of art and aestheSis in imagining a new way of existing, and in imagining new ways for art to exist beyond traditional institutions. This idea of imagining new worlds relates to the Afro-futurism movement, and according to Prof. Bogues, of Brown University (one of the class professors), many Afro-Futurists refer to the Suzanne Césaire quote.
Mignolo uses the word “de-linking” in moving away from concepts and spaces which excluded voices or dignities of colonized people (12). De-linking from the colonial past is to imagine a way of working that moves beyond the limitations of the universal.
Two quotes by Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist and political philosopher from Martinique, speak to having authority over your own aestheSis:
I stop there, for who can tell me what beauty is? (13)
I am not a potential of something, I am wholly what I am. I do not have to look for the universal. (14)
In my social design research, the idea of working with local knowledge in authentic (more on the idea of authentic will follow) collaborations came up again and again. Al Borde, an architecture collective in Ecuador, learns building skills from fishermen while they work together on a community building using local discarded materials, with the goal that the collective as an authority will become obsolete.
Iconoclasistas is a mapping project started by two Argentinian graphic designers. Iconoclasistas collaborates with communities to create maps showing how the people in a mining community know their surroundings and needs better than the central government.
Glissant states that history is not the sole property of historians, but also of everyday people (15). This is also true of aesthetics and the idea that skills, knowledge, and an aestheSis sensibility were held by cultures before colonialism.
How does this tie back into what I learned about social design and teaching art?
There is a clear overlap of the ideas of aestheSis and many of the social design tenets I have and will use in my teaching:
Importance of diverse views (plurality) especially in collaborating in order to have the strongest possible outcome
Importance of valuing the local knowledge
Importance of authentic** collaboration (letting go of authority especially as colonizing aka white culture)
Having students looking to the self instead of old paradigms for idea generation and aesthetic assumptions (questioning the question)
Where would I like to go with this once back at school?:
Take students to the MFA to mine the MFA: to question the collection, the labels, and to ask some of the questions we have been asking in this course.
Develop (likely with students) a toolkit of questions and activities to learn to dissect the idea of western aesthetics to see the pluralities that exist, to teach them to look “from the inside out” (Prof. Bogues).
I think it’s important that this affects group critiques, finding a way to ask questions not about typical western aesthetic judgements, but to place where our ideas of how things look comes from.
Questions this leaves me with
From our readings of Amié Césaire (16):
If exchange is oxygen, and contact is a good thing, is it possible to create an authentic exchange in colonized relationships? If so, how?
If colonization is thingification, does decolonization un-thingify? Is the idea of the “human” attainable?
How to educate around the common student statement of “anything can be art!" Mignolo says aesthetics aren’t open game, but in the articles I read didn’t go much beyond that.
What are commonalities? (I know this is big and depends, but I feel paying attention to this is relevant). How do we take note of cross overs with a sensitivity to cultural appropriation?
Is the idea of re-linking tied into the stereotype/expectation that art by colonized has to address identity?
“Liberation can’t be imposed...(it comes from the process of) caring for one another, and gaining a conscience about the self and each other’s humanity.”
-Decolonizing Design
Addendum:
**A classmate's question was "what is meant by authentic?" This is a really important question, and one I don't have a clear answer to, knowing an answer is not simple. Some of the answer is above, and is about "letting go of authority especially as colonizing aka white culture." This idea of letting go of authority is one that came up in my conversation with Hanna Piksen, director of education at Het Nieuw Instituut, which I will talk about in a future blog.
It relates to my questions about a reading from Amié Césaire: If "exchange is oxygen", and "contact is a good thing", is it possible to create an authentic exchange in (post) colonized relationships? If so, how?
Some of the specific strategies I heard from architecture educators around this idea of "authentic collaboration" were:
working with communities with an eye to learning from them
valuing local skills, materials, local knowledge, and working side by side
not assuming you are the authority in the situation
being aware of your own privilege, being humble about that privilege, and training ourselves to see these biases and positions of power that colonization has left us
It comes down to power, one that those in authority are often blind to, or substitute "good intentions" for good practices. Listening to the experiences and knowledge of others, and educating ourselves is just part of the work.
Links:
Social Design Insights Podcast
https://currystonefoundation.org/podcast/episode-75-new-forms-of-design-education-for-new-forms-of-cities/
African Design Centre
https://www.africandesigncentre.org
The Politics of Design
http://thepoliticsofdesign.com/about-the-book
Decolonising Design
https://www.decolonisingdesign.com
Renee Stout
http://www.reneestout.com/resume.htm
Yinka Shonibare
http://yinkashonibare.com
Al Borde
http://www.albordearq.com
Iconclasistas
https://www.iconoclasistas.net
William Kentridge
https://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/william-kentridge
Course:
https://bachelors.vu.amsterdam/en/summer-school/courses/DecolonizingEurope/index.aspx
Dr. Wayne Modest
https://www.materialculture.nl/en/about/wayne-modest
Modest's publication with the Tropenmuseum about the importance of the words we use in museums
https://issuu.com/tropenmuseum/docs/wordsmatter_english
Dr. Susan Legene
https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/s-legene
Dr. Anthony Bogues
https://www.brown.edu/initiatives/slavery-and-justice/images/b-anthony-bogues
Dr. Dienke Hondius
https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/dg-hondius
Dr. Judy Jaffe-Schagen
https://clue.vu.nl/en/researchers/fellows/jaffe-schagen/index.aspx
Footnotes
1-definition from Mac dictionary app
2-Mignolo and Vazques; Decolonial AetheSis: Colonial Wounds, Decolonial Healings
https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_topic/decolonial_aesthesis/
3- Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández; Decolonial options and artistic/aestheSic entanglements: An interview with Walter Mignolo (2014)b
https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/21310
4-Linda Nochlin, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Nochlin-Linda_Why-Have-There-Been-No-Great-Women-Artists.pdf
5-
6-Mignolo and Vazques; Decolonial AetheSis: Colonial Wounds, Decolonial Healings
https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_topic/decolonial_aesthesis/
7-Mirjam Shatanawi; Tropical Malaise: The Demise of museums of "non-Western peoples"
https://bidoun.org/articles/tropical-malaise
8-
9-Mignolo and Vazques; Decolonial AetheSis: Colonial Wounds, Decolonial Healings
https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_topic/decolonial_aesthesis/
10- Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández; Decolonial options and artistic/aestheSic entanglements: An interview with Walter Mignolo (2014)b
https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/21310
11- Robin D.G. Kelly, A Poetics of Anticolonialism; forward for Césaire, Aimé; Discourse on colonialism. A poetics of anticolonialism
12-Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández; Decolonial options and artistic/aestheSic entanglements: An interview with Walter Mignolo (2014)b
https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/21310
13-Frantz Fanon, The Fact of Blackness (1990)
14-
15-Glissant
16-Césaire, Aimé; Discourse on colonialism. A poetics of anticolonialism
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