Since 2020, the Socially Engaged Arts group has been considering decoloniality creative practices in the context of the emerging transcultural and global cooperation platform that is Shared Campus. Embracing nuances, complexity and the limits of such a “borderless” platform, we, the artists/designers/researchers - group members and guests - acknowledge our own decolonial frameworks/positionalities. Engaging in processes of ‘un-learning’ and destabilisation of hierarchical ways of thinking and working, our goal is to engender a ‘decolonised’ Shared Campus, expanded and emancipated with less-visible knowledge systems.
This year the Socially Engaged Arts group presents 4 happenings under the title “Unlearning Social Patterns”. Social behaviour is based on cultural signs that shape how people feel, think and act.
In the upcoming four happenings, three artists from the fields of graphic design, ink art and paper cutting and a theorist will present their transformative work on traditional representations and concepts and put them up for discussion.
Thursday, 11 May 2023
7:20-8:50am GMT
Beehive Collective https://beehivecollective.org
Jennifer Teeter, Kyoto Seika University
Saku Bee will be presenting Mesoamérica Resiste, the third and final instalment in the Beehive’s trilogy on globalization in the Americas. She will highlight stories of cross-border collective action, especially organizing led by women both within and at the forefront of social movements.
Thursday 25 May 2023
8:00-9:30am GMT
Peng Wei https://www.pengweiart.cn/en/
Yizhou Wang, AVA, HKBU
This talk introduces the artist’s new ink art series, “Rooms of Stories” (有故事的房間), which she completed in China over the past three years. This ongoing series consists of ink paintings on paper and animated videos or installations based on ink paintings.
Thursday, 1 June 2023
7:40-8:50 am GMT
Sawako Tanizawa https://www.tanizawasawako.com
Jennifer Teeter, Kyoto Seika University
The talk will include an explanation of the creation of works using the "kirigami" method, which is often placed on the periphery of art contexts, followed by a discussion of painter Chieko Takamura's encounter with "paper painting," and the context 100 years ago when she was active as an artist in Japan. The talk will then turn to Tanizawa's piece, "Dear Chieko" which she exhibited in 2022.
Friday 16 June 2023
6:30-8:30am GMT
Paulina Trejo Mendez, independent researcher and artist;
Judy Jaffe-Schagen, lecturer/researcher Reinwardt Academy Amsterdam;
Menno Welling and Jappe Groenendijk
Both invited artists/researchers will present their work and discuss politics of knowledge and decolonizing healing, looking into forms of resistance against embodied erasure (epistemicide and feminicide).