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Presenting with a panel of brilliant scholars at NAEA (Virtual Conference)
NAEA conference dates: March 4-7, 2021.

Pandemic Posthumanism: Theoretical-Material Implications of a Pandemic for Art and Art Education

Brief Description: Through a deep dive into their respective research involving posthumanist theoretical approaches, panelists discuss the consequences and futures of posthuman theories during the COVID-19 pandemic for art and art education.

Detailed Description: This presentation will continue and extend the emerging understandings of posthumanist ontologies in art education as they inform approaches to art and art education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Posthumanism is inherently transdisciplinary in its reach, as its central tenets tend to be entwined with three converging paths of ethical accountability:
  1. practical and affirmative ways of thinking and acting that create the conditions for re-imagining and reframing the dominant image and normative ideal of the human subject;
  2. a reconsideration of human subjectivity in the face of climate and ecological crises, and
  3. the shifting concepts of ‘human’ due to technological and bio-tech advancements. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, posthumanist theories are even more relevant as we are left questioning deeply troubling ontological and epistemological issues related to the post-COVID world we inhabit, especially as they pertain to art and art education. ​
Each panelist brings a nuanced view of how to work through and unpack posthumanist theoretical approaches in art education across a broad range of methods and sites of inquiry. The aim of this presentation is to help attendees understand the consequences of expanding our theoretical understandings of art education and present innovative research and pedagogical understandings in the arts that are relevant and necessary, particularly in relation to current and future global health crises. Each panelist will present their research in art education through posthumanist theories and take care to highlight the implications for ongoing research in art education and how this research has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The five panelists work with a variety of theoretical approaches to interrogate critical posthumanism in their respective art and art educational research: critical animal studies and disability studies; eco-justice and eco-literacy; socially-engaged media production and critical digital making; diffractive methodologies; and decolonial methodologies. While areas of social science, science/technology, and general education have produced a rich body of texts that interrogate posthumanism, there has been very little similar research in the fields of art education research as it is impacted by a pandemic. This session will attempt to address this dearth of posthumanist research in the arts, and open up emerging models of posthumanist theory and practice as a paradigm (rather than simply a tool) of rethinking art education for broader and sustainable societal impact. This deep dive into research will encourage and facilitate conversations on critical posthumanism and its broader implications for the development and deployment of its pedagogical practices in a variety of educational settings that are attempting to reassess their practices during COVID-19. This session intends to build ethical and practical sustainable solutions through the dialogue and action required to address rapidly shifting futures of teaching and learning needs within pandemic posthumanist contexts. By working through posthumanist theories, researches are able to respectfully attend to cultural boundaries enacted through the research. The nature of posthumanist theories is to be attentive, respectful, and deferential to cultural differences while exploring and interrogating the boundaries enacted by nature/culture.


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Visual Arts Exhibition: Collaborative work with Marcy Chevali 

Encounters 
Curated by Grace Aneiza Ali and presented at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning in Jamaica, New York. 
Dates:  April 1, 2021 through May 15, 2021.

Curatorial Statement
Encounters brings together artists whose work aims to bridge geographical, cultural, and political boundaries within South Asia and its diaspora.* The exhibition will depart from the individual artist model. Instead, Encounters will feature artist pairs—partnerships between two artists who each have strong connections or roots in the South Asian diaspora. Their collaborative work will emphasize narratives of connection and intersection, weave shared histories and experiences that may have been otherwise unknown or invisible, and envision collective futures and dreams among communities within the South Asian diaspora. In the present moment, as all forms of “distance” and “division” and “isolation” overwhelm our daily lives and our world, the exhibition will turn to a model of creative partnership, dialogue, community-building, and collaboration as social acts. The artworks featured in the exhibition will illuminate exchanges and shared bonds within the South Asian women’s diaspora—creating a space for support and an economy of care.
I contributed a chapter to this volume!

Provoking the Field: International Perspectives on Visual Arts PhDs in Education

Chapter 9:   Artmaking as Entanglement: Conceptualizing Agency  through a Diffractive Methodology--p. 103

Work in Progress...

  • new materialism/post-human/trans-human ontologies-epistemologies, entanglements, quantum entanglements (through Barad) and artmaking
  • material explorations/entanglements through artmaking
  • interrogations into agency and authorship through artmaking
  • exploring online collaborative research/artmaking practices 
  • Photoshop collages
  • inquiry into material/materiality through diffractive artmaking practice. 
  • video/sound assemblage
  • drawings/doodles/thinking
  • animated GIFs