Visual Autofiction: A Strategy for Cultural Inclusion

Visual autofiction can be seen as a storytelling method used by contemporary visual artists to initiate cultural inclusion within a field that has historically favored Western narratives and excluded many others. This chapter, which builds on theoretical reflections on autofiction, contends that contemporary artists endeavor to be culturally included in broad, decolonized visual narratives, through the use of innovative visual autofictional methods to represent their experiences. In the case of South African visual artist Bontle Tau, autofiction is used as a strategy to construct a multiform and multifaceted photographic narrative that foregrounds the diversity of selves and stories, further supporting the overall aim of cultural inclusion within representations in the field.

Against the Authoritarian Orator and His Pater familias: Deviant Literarity and Orphaned Speech in El padre mío by Diamela Eltit and Lotty Rosenfeld

Published in the last year of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte’s military dictatorship saw its end, My Father (El padre mío) constitutes an interprofessional, collaborative work between Chile National Literature Prize winner Diamela Eltit and visual artist Lotty Rosenfeld, composed of unaltered transcriptions of three monologues (dis)articulated by a schizophrenic vagrant who referred to himself as My Father. By re-enacting the vagrant’s irrational utterances in a truthful but parodic manner, Eltit and Rosenfeld “orphaned” these spoken words into a work of written literature that mocked the authoritarian voice of the dictator who had imposed himself as the Grand Orator of the Nation and the Father of Chile. The main objective of the present work, which is principally based on the conceptualization of Mute Speech by Jacques Rancière, is to examine the political dimension of Eltit and Rosenfeld’s aesthetic endeavor: through an exploration of the possibilities of political emancipation that the vagrant’s fatherless monologues fostered in My Father, our study demonstrates that what neoliberal civil society presupposes as objectionable animalistic noises may be capable of intervening in what Rancière refers to as the “distribution of sensible” and its consolidated aesthetics of hierarchy, thus subverting the fable of pater familias and pater patriae concocted by Pinochet’s right-wing military regime.

Making Time and Space for Art: An Examination of an Artist-in-Residence Within a Postsecondary Art Education Program

This article examines the process and impact of an artist-in-residence program in Art Education at the University of Victoria. After an open call to artists, contemporary Upper Tanana visual artist, Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé, member of the White River First Nation of Beaver Creek, Yukon and Alaska was selected as the inaugural artist-in-residence. Through research-creation and qualitative methods this research examines the artist’s artistic process and the impact of an artist-in-residence on students’ and faculty’s perception of artistic practice and their experience working with an artist-in-residence within a post-secondary space of learning. Through photographic documentation, reflections and interviews by participants, the article examines ways the artist-in-residence enriched student and faculty learning in a Faculty of Education. Keywords: Artist-in-residence; Post-secondary education; Artistic inquiry; Indigenous pedagogy; Beading. Résumé : Cet article s’intéresse au processus et à l’impact d’un programme d’artiste en résidence dans le domaine de l’enseignement des arts à l’Université de Victoria. Suite à une audition ouverte d’artistes, l’artiste visuelle contemporaine du Haut Tanana Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé, membre de la Première Nation de White River de Beaver Creek, du Yukon et de l’Alaska, a été choisie artiste-résidente inaugurale. La présente recherche utilise des méthodes quantitatives et de recherche-création pour étudier la démarche artistique de l’artiste et l’impact d’une artiste-résidente sur la perception de la pratique artistique chez les étudiants et le corps enseignant. On y analyse aussi l’impact de collaborer avec une artiste-résidente en milieu d’apprentissage postsecondaire. Documentation photographique, réflexions et entrevues des participant.e.s sont mises à profit pour déterminer de quelles façons l’artiste- résidente a enrichi l’apprentissage étudiant et du corps enseignant au sein de la Faculté d’éducation. Mots-clés : artiste-résidente, enseignement postsecondaire, recherche artistique, pédagogie autochtone, perlage.

Restoring the Self in the Language of Beauty and Balance: Esther Belin’s Of Cartography

The article analyzes the collection of poetry, Of Cartography, by Navajo poet and visual artist Esther G. Belin. In the collection, the poet explores the concepts of home and the self, merging her urban experience with traditional Navajo teachings. Written in a mixture of English and Navajo, the collection abounds in experimental poems with structure directly referring to the Navajo view of the cosmic reality. Grounded both in the Navajo philosophy of Beauty and Balance and modern, urban experience, Belin’s story can be interpreted as a healing rite that aims at restoring hózhǫ́: an ideal Navajo way of life which centers on the spiritual, physical, emotional, and psychological well-being of an individual and his/her community.

Karel Nel & COSMOS: A Far-Reaching Artist-in-Residence Collaboration

The phenomena of the universe form a common focus for the interrelationship between art that has space as its central concern and the astronomical sciences, as both disciplines strive to observe and express the mysteries of the cosmos. An unwavering mutual interest in space and mutual respect for each discipline form the nexus between the two. Some scientific projects have artist-in-residence programs that promote innovative art/science dialogues. Although most residencies are designed for the short term, one has certainly stood the test of time. The authors analyze one 15-year collaboration between visual artist Karel Nel and Caltech's Cosmic Evolution Survey, COSMOS.

'The Bitter Sweetness of the Space Between': Creative Reflections of Pasifika Ethnic Mixedness

<p>This Master of Arts thesis investigates and draws conclusions regarding how creative arts present accommodating spaces for articulating and understanding cultural mixedness amongst Pacific populations in New Zealand. New Zealand is home to an expanding Pacific population; statistics identify a growing number of these Pacific people who are multi-ethnic, and who are claiming their mixedness in official census data. As Pacific populations have grown, Pacific artists have risen to national prominence in visual, literary and performing arts. Many of these artists have themselves been of mixed ancestry. This thesis examines the work of three female New Zealand artists of mixed Samoan-English or Samoan-Indian descent, asking, “How do these artists and their work express their cultural mixedness?” Discussion centres on mixed media visual artist Niki Hastings-McFall, who is of English and Samoan descent; spoken word poet Grace Taylor, also of English and Samoan descent; and musical performer Aaradhna Patel, who is of Indian and Samoan descent. Placing both the creative work and public commentary of these three artists at its centre, this thesis explores how these artists publicly identify with their Samoan heritage as well as their other heritage(s); how they use their art as a platform for identity articulation; and how creative arts provide flexible and important spaces for self-expression. The thesis draws its theoretical underpinnings from Pacific studies, art history, transnational cultural studies and postcolonial studies, and utilizes Samoan and Tongan conceptions of vā as a key analytic tool.</p>

'The Bitter Sweetness of the Space Between': Creative Reflections of Pasifika Ethnic Mixedness

<p>This Master of Arts thesis investigates and draws conclusions regarding how creative arts present accommodating spaces for articulating and understanding cultural mixedness amongst Pacific populations in New Zealand. New Zealand is home to an expanding Pacific population; statistics identify a growing number of these Pacific people who are multi-ethnic, and who are claiming their mixedness in official census data. As Pacific populations have grown, Pacific artists have risen to national prominence in visual, literary and performing arts. Many of these artists have themselves been of mixed ancestry. This thesis examines the work of three female New Zealand artists of mixed Samoan-English or Samoan-Indian descent, asking, “How do these artists and their work express their cultural mixedness?” Discussion centres on mixed media visual artist Niki Hastings-McFall, who is of English and Samoan descent; spoken word poet Grace Taylor, also of English and Samoan descent; and musical performer Aaradhna Patel, who is of Indian and Samoan descent. Placing both the creative work and public commentary of these three artists at its centre, this thesis explores how these artists publicly identify with their Samoan heritage as well as their other heritage(s); how they use their art as a platform for identity articulation; and how creative arts provide flexible and important spaces for self-expression. The thesis draws its theoretical underpinnings from Pacific studies, art history, transnational cultural studies and postcolonial studies, and utilizes Samoan and Tongan conceptions of vā as a key analytic tool.</p>

Shifting Perspectives: A cinematic dialogue about Synthetic Biology in a more-than-human world

The short experimental film Shifting Perspectives stems from a collaborative research project initiated in 2019 in Sydney, Australia, during the ‘Choreographic Hack Lab—a week-long laboratory co-presented by Critical Path and Sydney Festival in partnership with the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS), which asked artists and academics to reflect and respond and rethink to the idea of the Anthropocene (Pini &amp; George, 2019). The film was later developed in 2020 during a Responsive Residency at Critical Path, Sydney, awarded to anthropologist and choreographer Sarah Pini in collaboration with Jestin George, biotechnologist and visual artist, and Melissa Ramos, visual artist and filmmaker.This work aims to open a multivocal interdisciplinary dialogue across screendance, performance and synthetic biology. Inspired by a recent conversation between two leaders in the field of synthetic biology (Sarah Richardson and Tom Knight) and their divergent approaches to working with microbial life (Agapakis, 2019), the film invites to consider how collaborating with microorganisms can reshape our future in a more-than-human world.&nbsp;

The great experiment – the Trinidad experiment: art, abolition and racial indenture across archipelagoes

Scholar Tao Leigh Goffe, co-editor of the Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies, interviews mixed media visual artist Andrea Chung who is based in the United States. Connecting the histories of the Great Experiment of indenture in Mauritius and the Trinidad Experiment of Chinese indentureship in the Caribbean, the two discuss the history of labour exploitation and the abolition of racial slavery comparatively across oceans. Themes include those tackled in Chung's artwork spanning colonialism, loss, motherhood, Afro-Asian heritage, and the material culture of global indentureship.