Art practice and teaching as practice in art is a stimulating process that shapes itself within formal and informal creative environments. The dynamic nature and meaning of art as an expanded idea is being experimented within class rooms, artist studios and more often within the limitations of social spaces that artists can occupy. Being an artist and educator the ever-alive question that I have had to constantly negotiate is how do you teach art? A question that most artists, art teachers and students engage with on the daily basis. The question that very often follows is how do you learn art? The age-old discipline that has flexed itself to shape the various processes of human existence still presents as an elusive entity waiting to be unraveled and discovered. It is a challenge, which, if encountered, can have rewarding consequences, not just to strengthen individual values but to build a collective imaginative future. But taking the provocation forward has its dynamics, as it can present an emerging territory yet to be mediated and embraced without fear.
Within the postcolonial context of a Nation struggling to assert and re-imagine the notions of freedom, particularly through the practice of different disciplines, art as a possible inclusive tool is still distanced from its potential stakeholders and larger audiences. For young aspiring artists, these negotiations are brutal, very often forcing them to fit into conventional practices of delivering convincing outcomes to match the disproportionate resource accessibility within art patronage. The alternative is to work within a corporate framework also generating deliverables that have a removed relationship to one’s personal experience.
This leaves limited options for artists wanting to take on the social production of art as a possible full-time practice. A few individuals and institutions, formal and alternative, are taking on the challenge to bridge gaps. It is mostly done through personal vision and mobilizing of little available funds. Within the State mechanism, a detailed review of its accessible support be it teaching, infrastructure, harnessing of contemporary knowledge, cultural forms for social engagement and creating a sustainable creative livelihood need to be addressed. In this context, recognizing and teaching art as a source of knowledge production for building a diverse social environment becomes significant.
With this scenario setting the real tone for my discussion, I am going to put down possible ways to understand the process of learning from my collected knowledge, particularly of and from the gaps that I have experienced.
Art as knowledge production
Here I must mention Joseph Beuys, a German artist who contributed significantly to art, pedagogy and theory in later half of the 20th century. He saw his art practice deeply intertwined with art education. In the context of the post-World War II shock, he conceived the notion of ‘social sculpture’ that invited the participation of an informed social engagement. He believed, ‘Every Human is an artist’, acknowledging the ability of individuals and communities to produce knowledge through the practice of art.
Art is commonly seen as a tool for self-expression but more often it embodies as a device shaping complex social and political positions that at times can be only articulated through the many possibilities that art practices can accommodate. This can sometimes become an overwhelming experience for the artist and at times for the audiences or social groups engaging with it. But at the same time for the artist, teacher or art student it opens up unlimited possibilities.
For example, historically the use of diverse mediums in art has been a way for artists to make a statement. The shift from using traditional materials like paint, canvas, clay etc. have been challenged by presenting for example found objects or materials from everyday use. For instance, Joseph Beuys used fat or specifically tallow to make large abstract sculptural pieces with devises to measure its core temperature which is in constant flux. He saw fat as a substance providing heat, as a natural healing material and as one that is alive and responsive to its environment. In this context the artist is bringing alive his personal experience and a collective call for healing. He is presenting an everyday material as one that has a sociopolitical meaning and shaping it as an object to invigorate a conversation within a public space. For the artist and the audience, it is a challenge to engage with the possibilities that emerge from a stimulus like this. It asks to rethink knowledge of a familiar material in one way to imagine and experience new meanings. When such historic artist’s contributions come into the classroom, for young artists it can be a difficult provocation to respond to. The individual object can no longer be interpreted without the understanding of its historical context requiring an intense engagement. But a certain rigor of this nature can expose a student or teacher to various possibilities that experiments with mediums can evoke.
The expanse of knowledge and its dimensions can become communication channels through multiple ways, not necessarily only visually. Audiences and communities can also be included in these conversations to initiate an informed exchange of knowledge, as this criticality brings a generative rhizomatic growth adding to the process of art producing knowledge, for and by the community. The practice of teaching art can align with the process of making and emerging as multiples ways of learning, as an integrated practice.
My personal artistic practice has developed around teaching different learning groups from young children to early practising artists. Most artists engage with teaching at some point of time in their practice. Some artists take on teaching as their focused practice repeatedly nurturing learning environments that also might transform into spaces for experimentations. Contemporary and radical emerging practices very often develop in formal institutional or semi-formal experimental art spaces. Mentors within these places play a significant role in building ethical blueprints for such emerging practices. It is in these incubators that diverse approaches can translate and transform.
For the Students’ Biennale 2016-17 and 2018-19 my partner Narendran, an artist and I mentored a group of young artists studying in the Govt. College of Fine Arts, Chennai and Kumbakonam. Students’ Biennale is an interesting platform as part of the Koch Muziris Biennale, Kochi, for young student artists, studying in Government art institutions to exhibit their works, exposing them to an international audience. Before the outcomes emerged, the student artists participated in a series of workshops initiated by us and the Students’ Biennale. These workshops were central to the development of the works for the exhibition. It involved extensive collective researching, reading, site visits, interviews, interactions, discussing and working together. This gave way for processed based devised projects to emerge. For the 2016-17 Edition of the Students’ Biennale a project archiving labour was exhibited in Kochi. The collection of works touched upon the various aspects of labour recorded as artistic experiences. The project gave all of us insights into the radical ways in which personal and social narratives can be articulated.
Artist train themselves to see their environments in unique and complex ways, this is part of their process of becoming. Even though the artist community is very small they tend to be very diverse with individual approaches. When each artist nurtures a learning and teaching space, they tend to shape their process as artists within the context of teaching. The young and emerging artists respond to these spaces and people, observing and contributing in layered ways. Exploration of ideas, experimenting with new mediums and responding to immediate concerns can accumulate to slowly develop a refined practice.
Teaching art practice
Artists describe their everyday engagements in relation to the work that they do as ‘practice’. This notion, as generic as it sounds denotes that it is dynamically evolving and very often as responses to social, political and personal environments. I have often felt that my art practice is constantly shaping itself because of my engagement with teaching. Teaching art or initiating creative responses might be very different from nurturing most other disciplines.
Art as an expanded discipline can overlap with various subjects, very often this aspect makes it difficult to define and tech art, expect in the way of specialized practices or as individual approaches. When teaching, a certain introspection with the notion of the ‘self’ is initiated. Individual existential awareness needs to be explored to identify the grey areas of the self and its expression. Along with a layered understanding of sociopolitical environments ones emerges as a specialist exploring in art. Teaching here can only be creating triggers that students might respond to. Very often these are endless experiments with words, images, approaches and interpretations.
When initiating a learning environment, I would start by making individual students aware of their located identity. Then to further reflect on what their conscious choices are, in terms of what their imaginations, what mediums they have explored and gravitate towards. This process also involves a lot of unlearning of what one already perceives as art. For instance, within the labour project, mentioned earlier, we were collectively thinking about bodily labour and sweat. We discussed the nature of the substance and its meaning as a medium. What emerged in the discussion was to think about collecting sweat as a conceptual exercise. Each of the student artists engaging with this idea collected their sweat when doing intense bodily work, like helping in the kitchen, building something and so on. The collected sweat was bottled and exhibited in the exhibition along with notes on the hours of labour that went into generating the sweat. This process can be seen as a collective exercise that produced an object and raised many questions. What is art? Can sweat become art? Maybe art is a process of awareness that helps us build narratives for collective sharing? How do acknowledge or archive labour and particularly invisible labour?
The locating of one’s identity helps shape a highly sensitive understanding of the ‘self’ to further observe its relationship with the larger environment. The emerging art works in a learning context like this doesn’t necessarily have to be about the identified ‘self’ but this awareness allows for an insight into the layered ways in which each of us relate socially, politically and/or aesthetically. Very often it is this experience that allows for individual artistic experiences to emerge. For me the learning teaching space has been one that is experimental and spontaneous, it moves from individual questions to collective articulation.
Mutually enriching
The schema of learning and teaching presents itself as a mutual experience for both the artist and the one who wants to be an artist, distinctions that are difficult to make sometimes. Perhaps the artist here has certain tested devices to trigger certain approaches. Even though this is mostly the case, often I have had to reimagine processes to be more inclusive and sensitive when diverse groups are being addressed. These provocations also emerge as circumstances demand, sometimes it is spontaneous and at other times it is a struggle to challenge fixed positions. But it is one that is evolving and accumulating momentum.
The more you realize diversity is present in every group, you see that making space for these voices can shape in many different ways the sensorial experiences and the different locations that each work comes from. This is reaised sometimes by means of the subjective choices, sometimes through the various mediums.
Historically, artists have been using a range of materials and mediums to bring context to their spectrum of expression. These various experiences have been and can be evoked through the selection and use of material. The experimentation with these complex processes asks for responses from multiple stand points.
Critical thinking
To imbibe critical thinking in making practices might help in building layered understanding of the present, influenced by the past and future. This is a process that presents as an interesting discussion in any learning space particularly in art, as it has the possibility and exhilaration to touch upon a range of content. Weaving in aspects of criticality and resistance can build strong narratives. Learning environments can shape into spaces where hidden or ignored narratives can find a valid voice, having the potential for these spaces to turn into socially and politically charged discussion spaces.
With inclusiveness becoming increasingly important, critical thinking can open doors to allow for more dynamic perspectives. Allowing to reimagine and challenge dominant narratives that have occupied the central spaces invariably creating margins. What can then possibly be a nurturing space for an emergent practice-based teaching? This question has been a point of enquiry for me and a few fellow artists. These notions have emerged as experiments with art making, exhibiting and in finding ways to activate this temporal space that come alive. We are increasingly realizing that it is through community engagement, be it within the artist community or in relationship with the larger community, that we will be able to device a more organic practice of learning and teaching. As art is not always a practice that can be initiated and nurtured in isolation, it needs an evolving ecosystem of responses and giving.
Krishnapriya C P is a practising artist, educator and cultural producer based in Chennai. Views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of Confluence, its editorial board or the Academy.
This article is part of a Confluence series called “Mentor-Mentee Relationships in Academia: Nature, Problems and Solutions”.