UNIVERSAL LEARNING FROM THE ARTIST

Up to this point, and even within this course the majority focus on Arts Education has been the technical components and ways of doing “art”. Module 6 is to equip us with the ideas about how we develop our professional standing as being educators.

Despite this being an overused phrase, “life long learning” is the key to be a “professional” educator.

Therefore within the contexts of this course, is to consider how we learn from art, but then think about the role of an artist, and the person behind the art and what that means to our daily interactions with culture.

Institutions and formal systems through both arts/culture and education have a historically exclusionary practice, and currently still are. Galleries, formal schools of thinking and critiques laid out a set of rules, and categories of what IS and IS NOT art. Which mirrors within education, what IS knowledge, and what IS NOT.

As educators, we will be that filter, that screen, and that facilitator of knowledge, and it is as free and as limited by our own conceptions what these ideas means to us. Regardless of the subject we teach, the commonality in making those decisions is based from culture, and as such we should understand what the current conversations are taking place within it.

The current works that have, are being and have yet to be made by Contemporary Indigenous Artists are putting forth a change. These artworks, performances and cultural materials are rooted in resilience, and forward themselves in reclamation. These works are built from a past, but they are fusing together present experiences, culture is being shifted to acknowledge itself and to acknowledge the experience and existence of multiple ways of knowing and that Indigenous minds, bodies, experience are not in museums or are historical. They are alive, current and contribute to shifting societal practises and worldview.

When we enter a space like an art gallery, or hear of artists and witness contemporary art, we are witnessing a product, process and the closest forms of experiencing another's story we can achieve. Looking at art is not a passive activity, because there is relationship formed within experience of witnessing an expression.

That is a space to appreciate, to listen and to sit with and to be a part of. As other members of society, we are consumers and contributors to our formal systems, exposing ourselves to spaces that share another's experience and perspectives unique to them, gives us a moment of pause and opportunity to adjust our sense of "what is and isn't" worth knowing.

Contemporary works by artists are everywhere, look within your own communities, look at local art galleries, look in magazines, through social medias, on clothing, behind brands, performances, films and music. There are contemporary Indigenous visual artists, writers, directors, performers, and educators that are all creating works that are expressing and contributing knowledges that surpass formal outlines of curricular outcomes, and are sharing experiences that are local as well as global in scale.

Who are the current CONTEMPORARY Métis and Indigenous artists missing from the curriculum?

This is the beginning of a group of Creative individuals that our current curriculum models have not recognized and is by no means the only artists out there, I know I have missed many. It is my hope is that this list continues its growth adding all of the richness that comes with the Métis Culture. Please feel free to send me a message with artists, musicians, creatives that I am missing and I will continue to build this resource for your future classroom use.

As of March 20, 2022....

Christ Belcourt

Métis Artists.com

RESILENCE: The National Billboard Project

INSURGENCE RESURGENCE

Jamie Black: The Red Dress Project

Jessie Short: Wake UP

Rosalie Favell

Melanie Monique Rose

Indigenous art and Place-Making Installations