Tuesday 15th June 2021
Author: Nicola Tagoe
Categories
March
Written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, Illustrated by Nate Powell
Book Review by Karl Foster, Staff
Sometimes there are two Americas. This has been said many times.
John Lewis was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He was one of the “Big Six” leaders of groups who organised the 1963 March on Washington, played many key roles and actions in the Civil Rights Movement and to end racial segregation in the United States.
Today he is the U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 5th congressional district, serving since 1987.
Published in three parts this graphic novel helps understand the distinct phases of John Lewis’ career in activism.
Book One: Lunch counter sit ins. Book Two: Freedom Rides and the March on Washington (including John’s most famous speech). Book Three: Voter Rights, 1964 US Election (The election of L.B. Johnson) and the 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery
It begins with Inauguration of Barack Obama’s, the 44th US President and is used as a counterpoint for John’s activities in his earlier life for desegregation and emancipation. Events take place from 1940 – 2009 during the most extraordinary period of US history.
As a young man he is called to seek justice by the voice of God, believes in non-violent protest at a time when universal hostility towards black people by the US system and the white population was the order of the day. A radical departure. Living by the simple notion to engage peacefully with people who feared change and denied the possibility that African Americans could ever be their equal. He and many others challenged the segregation of the American South that had existed since the abolition of slavery. The further South he travels the more he is drawn into the heart of darkness.
A tale of bravery and conviction at a time when courage and beliefs could mean the loss of job, personal injury, imprisonment or death. African American deaths were not a priority for investigators. The South was littered with victims of hatred and white supremacist ideology. Murders of white activists in Mississippi brought the media running in. The story says things can improve, that ignorance overcome, that Government can make concessions and enforce the law.
Monochrome Illustrations capture the period and intensity of the movements in their desire for progressive change. Scenes of church bombing in Birmingham are vivid and the expression of dignity of oppressed peaceful protestors comes across well. These images set the scene for a world that revolved around the actions of CORE, NAACP, SCLC and SNCC. Natural rivalries and divisions but these were mostly generational. All agreed that change was necessary. Speed and intensity fuelled these debates.
He survived this tumultuous period despite others close to him paying the ultimate price. The novel asks, “What would you be prepared to do or risk for what is right?” Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., opposites, became social activists rather than purely racial champions both died for the same ideal.
The trilogy has extra coverage and sales thanks to John Lewis’ spat with the 45th US President. The current US situation demands a return to the protests that shaped our present and may protect our future.
Photos taken by Caroline Thomson
Publishers website http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/947
Authors website http://www.andrewaydin.com
Illustrators website http://www.seemybrotherdance.org
Reviewer’s blog http://happyaccidentgraphicstorytelling.blogspot.co.uk
This article was originally written and published in Decolonising the Arts Curriculum: Perspectives on Higher Education Zine 1 (2018).
Categories
Don’t Forget to Celebrate
Anita Israel, Student/Staff
Having come to the UK from Kenya as a child, I was raised with western ideals, however, my mother never let me forget my origin. My photography career began as an exploration into my own identity, but as the projects have grown so has my approach. My role as Education Officer at UAL’s Student’ Union delivers a unique and often melancholic perspective into what young black creatives are up against. I’ve had to bear witness to the effects of institutionalised racism. The experience of lobbying the university for a fair and equal education has moulded my perspective and strengthened the urgency to uplift the black voice through my work. I’m consistently documenting the evolution of the black identity, using my camera to examine the ways in which African and Caribbean culture has evolved and thrived in spite of society’s limitations.
‘Don’t forget to celebrate’ consists of a series of portraits taken over a three-year span at Notting Hill Carnival. My images demonstrate an ownership and comfortability over the black identity. They signify a time of celebration, elation and youthfulness, serving as a reminder to myself and others that struggle is not without celebration.
Sometimes it can be impossible to disassociate from societal and political chaos, I often feel as if we are simply recycling the same fights our ancestors were having years ago. Nevertheless, we owe it to ourselves to celebrate our identities, be proud of our achievements and praise each other… always.
This article was originally written and published in Decolonising the Arts Curriculum: Perspectives on Higher Education Zine 2 (2019).
Categories
Re-imagine: A New Humanity at UAL
Maureen Salmon, Staff
Culture and education are the most powerful weapons for social and economic change in the world and it just so happens to be our core business. As a leading art and design education institution in the UK, we should be in pole position to effect significant change not just in our institution but the wider society by reimagining a new humanity for UAL. With a proliferation of ‘decolonising’ projects across the six colleges and in establishing the UAL Decolonising Art Institute we have made a good start to creating new futures. As we acknowledge and celebrate these initiatives and milestones, we must ensure the contextualisation and sustainability of this work as integral to UAL Strategy for transformative education and related Academic, People, Learning and Enhancement strategies.
We need resilience, strengths and power to engage with ‘decolonisation’ beyond the art and culture on a much wider societal level, by challenging the political, intellectual and structural legacies of colonization and racism.
We need to create a new culture of decolonized mindset, governance and leadership that measure and evidence the social, cultural and economic impact and outcomes for our students, staff, the University, industry and the wider society nationally and internationally to create sustainable futures.
The value I bring is to lead the change I want in the world.
“Inspired by the traditional art of the Bini people of Edo State (Nigeria) I use
our beliefs, cultural knowledge and traditional values in my work as a way
of articulating in the contemporary world my values and ideas of resilience,
strength and power.”
Favour Jonathan
Widening Participation Ambassador
CSM Graduate 2019
This article was originally written and published in Decolonising the Arts Curriculum: Perspectives on Higher Education Zine 2 (2019).
Vikki Hill, Staff
In our four filmed interviews ‘Critical Pedagogy Bites’ (2018), we explore how we can decolonise our curriculum by using critical pedagogy as a means to address oppressive power relations within the learning and teaching space. Decolonisation of the classroom/lecture theatre/ studio involves not only what we learn and teach, but the way that we learn and teach.
Critical Pedagogy is most typically associated with the work of Paulo Freire, the Brazilian Educationalist, who was interested in raising literacy levels amongst peasants. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), Freire criticised traditional rote learning methods that alienated the learner (and the teacher) and instead aimed to develop self-reflexivity in the learner and awaken a critical consciousness. Education is intimately linked to the production and reproduction of social relations, power and politics. Therefore, the critical pedagogue argues that questions of oppression, social justice and democracy are not distinct from the acts of learning and teaching.
In Critical Pedagogy #4, Gurnam expands on the importance of non-hierarchical dialogue and exchange to develop critical consciousness, to connect ideas to lived experience (and vice versa) and to affect change in the world. In practice, the pedagogical approaches that we, as both educators and students, can take forward would be to realise that creative teaching methods on their own are no guarantor of transformative learning but we should aim to deploy a broader canvas – visual, auditory, tactile, that can engage and stimulate.
In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks writes “I enter the classroom with the assumption that we must build “community” in order to create a climate of openness and intellectual rigor… It has been my experience that one way to build community in the classroom is to recognize the value of each individual voice.” (1994, p40)
By decolonising our pedagogy, the learner can create a new framework for negotiating the idea of intelligence that is both critical and action orientated leading from personal perspective transformation to social and political change.
This article was originally written and published in Decolonising the Arts Curriculum: Perspectives on Higher Education Zine 1 (2018).
Categories
Painting, A Decolonising Act
Jheni Arboine, Student/Staff
Abstraction, geometrics and chromatics are the triadic signs of my painting practice, underpinned by semiotics of stripes, the rectilinear, Concrete Poetry and the dynamic tension of decolonisation. Mavis Pusey (1928-2019) her legacy, encourages me to pay attention and to stay committed to abstraction. I remember going to see an exhibition by a painter, a Cuban painter, a Black Cuban male painter, Wifredo Lam (1902-1982).
I was compelled to enter, because I could see myself reflected. It wasn’t his style of painting or the subject matter per se; but the most powerful part of the encounter, was what he said:
‘My painting is an act of decolonisation.’
This statement, this mission, this declaration, this claim, this thesis, this proclamation reverberated in me. It gave me confidence, agency, big-bout-yar; it energised my manifesto of resilience and made me tallawy. As a painter whose intersectionality is not white, male, European or middle class, I have the additional work of explanation and justification.
I am a painter, a black woman of Jamaican parentage. Frank Bowling’s (b.1934) indubitable stand on abstraction and being a painter first (2019), gives me some comfort and aesthetic alignment. There are allies too, Sean Scully (b.1945), a white Irish man recently mentioned, ‘the equal opportunity of abstraction’(2019).
Does my positionality pose a problematic for the discipline, for the normalised and for me? Therefore, by applying Wifredo Lam’s dictum to my studio practice, teaching and research, so as I paint/teach/research, I am decolonising, the more I paint/teach/research the more I am decolonising both painting/teaching/research and myself. Does my practice disturb and disrupt the normalisation? It is as though I am encroaching on a sacred territory that should not be mine. A type of trespass in the forbidden zone of normalisation.
Alma Woodie Thompson (1891-1978), Dr Esther Mahlangu (b.1935) and Althea McNish (b.1933), share a passion for abstract painting. They are giants to me, as black women they amplify the use of colours and geometric symbols as semiotic signs of happiness, resilience and joy as signifiers of antidotes to ‘inhumanity’ [a gentile code word for colonisation, empire and its associated violence and violation of the Prime Directive – my semiotic inference] and as a way of ensuring a place in the canon as it expands to include those that it had appropriated from and erased from memory.
Decolonising painting is also about a type of ‘habeas corpus’ to bring OUT the paintings by black artists and artists of colour, that are owned by museums and galleries. These institutions tend to keep the works detained in storage, in special collections, hidden from view.
Optimism can shine through with a Critical Pedagogy of painting. Where a diversity of teaching staff collaborates to ensure inclusivity and expansive curriculums that decolonise. Different ways of thinking, advocated by Claudia Rankine, research into women painters, Rebecca Fortnum and aligning painting and theory of signs by Isabella Graw. These three strands intersect in my research on a pedagogy of resilience and my own research methodology (Arboine, 2018).
I paint what I like
I stand my ground and
I paint no matter what anybody says
I use a semiotic painting language imbued with ‘prayer’, an Indexical interrogation of the city and its hidden histories/herstories.
I paint what I like
I stand my ground
This article was originally written and published in Decolonising the Arts Curriculum: Perspectives on Higher Education Zine 2 (2019).
Categories
Confessions of a Colonial Lecturer
Lucy Panesar, Staff
I taught Contextual Studies on Foundation for over 10 years, and whilst it was my personal goal to instil in students a sense of social and environmental responsibility, in hindsight I could have done so much more if I had known then what I know now…
When I first started the job, I consulted the awarding body’s handbook on what content to cover, and saw that I was to begin with early Modernism and the Great Exhibition of 1851. I got on with the task, looking to Gombrich and the V&A website for reference, and soon developed a fascination with the Victorian era and the British Empire. I enjoyed telling students the story of Paxton’s Crystal Palace, the showcase for Queen Vic’s imperial treasures, and I showed examples of design from that time illustrating her power as Empress, like the wallpaper pictured here. I would point to the inset illustrations of ‘natives’ in loincloths, fighting amongst themselves in the colonial settings. I described this and while I was curious to know more and explain more I didn’t, as I’d need to quickly move onto the next example of European modernism: Pablo Picasso and the inspiration he gained from African masks.
Not long before leaving that role, I had started a Masters in Education, investigating racial inequalities, learning more about decolonisation and becoming increasingly conscious of the implications of what I was including and excluding in my lectures, recognising the power of a single image in perpetuating an ideal of racial superiority and inferiority. A covering for a wall with a repeated print of dark, naked ‘natives’ surrounding their colonial mother/ saviour/ oppressor (delete according to your view).
On reading Afua Hirsch’s book Brit(ish) I learn that a great majority of British people are, to this day, proud of Britain’s colonial history. I have never felt such pride. As a descendent of Punjabi Sikhs, who migrated to Kenya and then the UK as a result of British Imperial rule, I find the wallpaper now even more disturbing. Later in her book, Hirsh expresses something of what I feel when she writes:
‘One reason is that I didn’t know what Britain was. I didn’t know its true past, I was totally unaware of its secrets. And when it comes to race, Britain definitely has secrets. They lurk in the language, and the brickwork and the patterns of society, so that, for those who are silent or desperate enough to listen and search, clues gradually begin to reveal themselves. Some of these secrets relate to the days, turned years, turned centuries, in which British people mingled their destinies with the people and products of India, China, South East Asia and the Middle East for instance. Others would explain, if only we could hear them, why Britain and Africa are so closely linked. A link that was directly responsible for my existence‘ (2018, p.37).
I reflect on the mingling of my Indian and British parents, brought together by our Victorian Empress and what more I could have said in those lectures back then …
This article was originally written and published in Decolonising the Arts Curriculum: Perspectives on Higher Education Zine 1 (2018).