|
April
13 - 19, 2018
35
ART | BOOKS | SOCIETY | TRAVEL | CULTURE
By Dominic Muwanguzi
Formal western art training in the East African region
started
with Mrs. Margaret Trowell, a Christian missionary, who
rst lived in Kenya and later Uganda. It is in Uganda during early 1937 that
Trowell established her frst art classes on the verandah of her home in Mulago,
Kampala. Her teaching emphasised African tradi-tional
techniques of making art. She wanted her students to be independent of the
west-ern modernist approach of art production. She emphasised practical rather
than theo-retical forms of learning. Students were to form their own
interpretation of day to day situations and apply such understanding in their artworks.
This method produced art that was localised. In 1940 she convinced the head of
Makerere College (now university) to start teaching art. But Trowell’s approach
or `vernacular art teaching’ was interrupted when she retired
from the art school in 1958. Since then, art
teaching has concentrated on equipping students with
theoretical materials in form of European art history and acquisition of studio
skills; including `proper’ picture construction and colour theory. Art training
became
passive with no hands- on work for students.
Art lost relevance and interested students.To return to vernacular art teaching
or
decolonising art education, scholars across
Africa are advocating renewed emphasis on an art and the
community approach instead of the colonial method of art education at ter-tiary
institutions. This intervention makes art more practical than theoretical and
encour-ages students to think beyond the classroom and be independent-minded.It
is argued that art learning is impeded
when English, a colonial language, is used in teaching,
in literature, and in the physical
space- the classroom.
So, teachers of art address learners in the
local language. This happened at the `Anoth-er RoadMap
for Arts Education’ workshop held at Nagenda International Academy of Art and
Design (NIAAD) in July 2015.But it soon ran into challenges: the scholars at
the conference were trained in
western art colleges and live abroad, the project
emphasised structural policies, and it
lacked funding. Although it was funded by
NIAAD and similar art institutions, these in
fact solicit funding from western art colleges or
cultural institutions. So the west was still promoting its own ideology through
tar-geted support.
Secondly, art colleges like Makerere Uni
-versity traditionally perceive art as elitist and
not for the average person in the com-
munity. It is a contradiction aicting the art
and the community schemes at Makerere.
Recent eorts to integrate the local commu
-
nity through exhibitions of artworks by or
for the deaf and blind by both Dr. Angello Kakande (All
the Light We Can See 2017) and Dr. Amanda Tumusiime have been suc-cessful. But
the academic approach impedes
their eectiveness. Community integra
-tion is treated like a research project for the
academia and not a communal venture that
benets
the grassroots.
Tusiime Mathias’ community art project;
the Uganda Community Art and Skills Development
Recycling (UCASDR), is dierent. It is located in the community.
Tusiime an artist with no formal art train-ing is a
casual labourer at the School of Fine
Art and Design, Makerere and through his indigenous art
practices, he established a
platform to train the local community in art skills
through apprenticeship. This scheme
promotes innovation and experimentation.
It has created barkcloth paper. It is devoid of academic
pretensions.
Thirdly, the emergence of academic art platforms like
Thirdtext Africa and recently
Startjournal makes vernacular art teaching
inecient if not ambiguous. The editorial
teams and policies used to document and censure art from
the continent and western- based yet many artists and practitioners do
not have the “relevant” qualications to do
art.
Some local artists, such as Eria Sane Nsub
-uga an artist – a Phd student at Southamp-
ton University in England - argues that aca
-demic knowledge is essential to safeguard the
disciplinary aspect of art. The surge in the interest of art from Africa and in
art festi-vals in Europe and North America is seen as a threat not a boon. It
shouldn’t be.
Speaking
vernacular for modern artists
Contradictions
in decolonising art training in Africa
https://www.scribd.com/document/377340159/THE-INDEPENDENT-Issue-516
| 
