IN-PERSON Prague Research & Teaching Conference

Abstract

A nation’s galleries and museums care for the art and objects of and for their people’s. Yet, there is often a lack of diversity. Representation is negated as the discourses of Eurocentrism and patriarchy dominate the gallery’s wall. Thus, for the marginalised often space limited, made available for only the token few; currently at the National Gallery just 1% of women artists have a place in their collection. Accordingly, this is a story of an artist as educator, researcher and author in an open conversation with the National Gallery, London, England. It is a tale that needs telling of the importance of visual material cultures, re-calling how language and practice can position the individual as subject and or object; bodies that are or can be enabled or disabled in systems and institutions. I bear witness to reproductive practices that reproduce sameness at the National Gallery, beginning as a teacher challenging the curriculum and the canon, then as a creative practitioner, curator and art historian. It is time for a change and this paper goes some way to affect change by calling out these social injustices. To aid my activism, in an ethos of feminism and decolonial approaches to education and art, I drew upon Helen Cixous, as well as my creative practice of art and poetry. I explore Cixous’s idea of blowing up masculine and colonial discourses by flying above, beyond language. In this way the arts and education can be seen differently for all its diversity and rich heritages.