By examining the histories of art education in the 20th and 21st centuries beyond classical Western academic traditions, these texts explore the historical development of educational institutions, from their origins to reform efforts. Moreover, this theme investigates how artists who lived through colonial times navigated colonial educational institutions and their legacies in the post-colonial era. Consequently, “Pedagogies” highlights artist-led initiatives aimed at decolonizing art education in regions previously colonized by Western nations. Additionally, it considers alternative artistic training methods alongside various learning approaches outside traditional art schools, such as workshops, residencies, festivals, and mentor-mentee or master-disciple relationships. “Pedagogies” thus acknowledges the multitude of ways in which one can become an artist and share knowledge about art-making.
Born in the village of Kwali, Ladi Dosei Kwali (1925–1984), the pioneering Nigerian potter, grew up in a family in which it was the norm for women to make pots for practical use and sustenance. Although it was customary for mothers to teach this skill to their daughters, Kwali learned pottery from her aunt. She…
Before Nightfall, a 1981–82 triptych by Nilima Sheikh, imagines a scene unfolding at twilight on the campus of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda, a city in the Indian state of Gujarat (fig. 1).1The name of the city was officially changed to Vadodara in 1974. Since the university was founded prior to then and…
In a sketchbook that dates to her early student years at Framingham State College (now Framingham State University) in the mid-1970s, the artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, 1940–2025) wrote, “[I] have a brainstorm . . . to do a series of paper dolls.”1Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, unpublished sketchbook, c.…
The prefix “para-” stages an ancillary relation: near, beside, beyond, off, away. Across the series of essays that comprise Paracuratorial Southeast Asia, we look at the “paracuratorial”: methods, sensibilities, frameworks, and practices that work within, alongside, or as supplement to exemplary curatorial frameworks such as the exhibition or the collection. The series of essays focuses…
In the etching Youth (1965; fig. 1), a contemplative figure sits atop a globe, head resting on a knee, legs twisted together, arms tucked protectively into the body. The figure’s head, which is turned inward, counterposes the frontal, downcast face in the lower left foreground. It is this face that the etching’s maker, Ugandan artist…
The work of Nigerian woman artist Clara Etso Ugbodaga-Ngu (1928–2003) offers a window into cultural representations of African men and women in postcolonial Nigeria. In what was a male-dominated art scene in the 1960s, Ugbodaga-Ngu stood out not only because of her visual production, but also because of her intellectual involvement as a faculty member…
Malika Agueznay was among the first woman modernist abstract artists in Morocco. She was a student at the Casablanca École des Beaux-Arts from 1966 to 1970, during the experimental tenure of the faculty known as the Casablanca School. Shaped by the formative experience within the school, she has also distinguished herself by the ways her research emphasizes her female identity. Throughout her career, she has elaborated on seaweed as a central motif in her abstract practice. This motif is both deliberately evocative of femininity and rooted in her own female perspective.
How do you historicize the events of the dehistoricized? From its inception in 1948, the apartheid regime implemented a system of institutionalized racial segregation against the nonwhite citizens of South Africa. In recent years, a counter narrative has emerged of a group of artists and activists who viewed “culture as a weapon of struggle” against the oppressive policies of the apartheid regime.
This conversation took place via email from December 2020 to February 2021. Though participants had already been acquainted for a long time before this, they began their exchange with casual personal introductions.
