As a student and now a lecturer from the Far East, I personally experienced the
challenges of navigating my own heritage in a fine art curriculum that is
predominantly rooted in Western art history and aesthetics. This experience has
made me acutely aware of the need for greater cross-cultural representation and
diversity in the arts and led me to pursue an academic intervention aimed at
decolonizing the arts curriculum.
During my time as a BA fine art student at Chelsea College of Art, I happily and
willingly absorbed the history, knowledge and perspectives that were on offer which
were great, and I learned tremendously. An unintended result was that they framed
what for me was “good” or “legitimate” way of making and thinking about art. When
I left the BA course and progressed further into my fine art studies, I began to
question where my own heritage and cultural experience stand in the arts. I realized
that I have repressed my origin and heritage to please the system I was in by mimicry
(Bhabha, 1994). This was a result of internalized racism, a result of the post-colonial
condition I was brought up with in Hong Kong (Law, 2009).
While BA Fine Art course at Cheslea is changing and has been embracing diversity,
inclusion and decolonization as part of its teaching ethos, which manifested in
changing the way theory is taught, including more non-Western artist examples and
employing Black, Asian, Minority Ethinic (B.A.M.E) staff. This approach did not go far enough to challenge the production of knowledge. I am interested in changing perspectives on contemporary art and practices.
With this in mind, I hope that my project echoes the ethos of the Decolonising
the Arts Institute (UAL, 2023) which is “to challenge colonial and imperial legacies,
disrupting ways of seeing, listening, thinking and making to drive cultural, social and
institutional change”. This is important because it endorses equity, both in
attainment and in cultural power. Within UAL in the last four years, we see a consistent gap between home white students and home Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic students. (see chart 1). The gap is more stark between home white and home black students. The gap exists as well between home and international studetns (UAL Dashboards, 2023). The data
alone by no means indicates that this is due to a lack of broad perspectives on the
course. However, anecdotally, from my personal experience as an assessor for
degree shows, B.A.M.E students whose work and diversity of references “look”
different from the canon were marked down. The reason being that the student
didn’t reference any artist or theorist, i.e. references that are part of the milieu
familiar to the tutor.
To truly liberate the arts curriculum and to redistribute cultural power, it’s not just
about changing the reading lists or the creation of more lists. It is also about
changing the way course content is delivered and assessed, and the environment in
which students are expected to learn. (NUS 2011) It is about dismantling the
hierarchy of knowledge – of what is valuable and legitimate discourse, context and
what is not, of what could look like contemporary art and what does not. As
discussed in Burke and McManus’s Art for a Few (2009), it Is important to consider
which art is privileged and which type of art is encouraged and dismissed. They
quoted Bourdieu in asserting that art is implicated in the reproduction of
inequalities, and that the relationship between culture and power is such that taste
creates social differences. Certain kinds of art can be decoded and appreciated by
those who have been taught how to decode them (Bourdieu 1984). The cultural
capital of the working classes, and certain ethnic groups are, as a result,
compromised.
In my teaching context, non-Western discourses are compromised in
favour of the dominant Western discourses. This view is also supported by Stuart
Hall, who argued how the West has constructed the “Other” as inferior through
cultural representation to justify domination over non-Western cultures (1992) and
that cultural representations are always embedded in power relations and can be
used to reinforce or challenge dominant ideologies (1997).
As such, I hope that the project can shed light in practical terms in my teaching practice how can can decolonise not just the curriculum but our thinking habits and the dominant narratives that have ingrained our minds through our education.