I am a Mexican visual artist living in Montreal. A few years ago, I made the decision to leave what is known and familiar to me – my home, my family and my community in Mexico – in order to pursue doctoral studies in art education in Canada. The life experiences that came with this change of location have influenced my choice of research interests. Perhaps most salient among these is my ongoing doctoral research, which consists of a self-developed studio practice that focuses on the de-construction (Derrida, 1997) of my cultural identity. Having been a working artist for over ten years, I consider my studio practice the point of departure that leads to the formulation of further educational research questions. In other words, my studio is a site for exploration in which I test concepts and media, and in doing so, allow my intuition to take the lead. As a result, the (E) Motions project is a self-study in which I have explored the ways in which collage and digital media (photo and stop motion animation) may communicate the experience of belonging a not belonging to a place. The results of my self-study have illuminated the possibilities of using these media in order to develop community-based educational activities engaged with the exploration of cultural identity.
This article aims to answer the question, “How can a visual culture jam be utilized to foster Culturally Responsive Art Education (CRAE)?” My master’s research project provides the data needed to approach this question. I conducted my project during Fall 2012 at a mid-Atlantic research-based university as an assignment in a pre-service art education Capstone course[1]. My participants were senior level, pre-service art educators, who were about to embark on student teaching during Spring 2013. The curriculum was centered on a performance-based art project in which participants created “visual culture jams” as a form of critical self-reflections of their own cultural, ethnic, and racial identities. The performance of these visual culture jams disrupted the notion of “essentializing” cultures and encouraged participants to probe their cultural identity (Sleeter, 2012, p. 570). My arts-based research project took place over a period of three class sessions and data includes digital self-portraits, narrative responses, and video recorded performances of my participants’ visual culture jams. Performances will be discussed through the following emergent themes: family as culture, heritage, and other forms of identity. My own reflection on the project will conclude this article and consider whether or not CRAE was successfully implemented.
