Unmuted: A Call for Critical Counternarratives in Social Justice Art Education

As a social justice art educational paradigm has emerged, the search for a counternarrative practice has been demanding in art educational research and practice as an apparatus to encourage social and educational equity (Acuff et al., 2012; Bae-Dimitriadis, 2020; Bae & Ivashkevich, 2012; Bell et al., 2013; Herman & Kraehe, 2018; Ivashkevich, 2017; Kraehe, 2015; Rolling & Bey, 2016; Travis & Hood, 2016; wilson et al., 2022).

In the past decade, we have encountered myriads of contingent social and educational unjust events and issues, which include police violence over Black people (such as George Floyd, Freddie Gray, and Daunte Wright, to name a few); schools functioning as pipelines to prison for youth of color and to increased suicides for LGBTQ youth; school segregation by race and class; strict policies in several states on law reinforcement and health coverage restrictions for undocumented immigrants; construction of pipelines on Indigenous land, including the Dakota access pipeline case at Standing Rock; limited access to and the discrimination of reproductive health care and abortion bans; gun violence against minoritized people; and reinforcement of the U.S.–Mexico border control, which bans undocumented immigrants from entering and causes family separations and detentions; and the Israel–Palestine war and other ongoing militarized conflicts.

In facing these real-world events, many social justice artists, in addition to art educators, researchers, and activists, have fearlessly sought out critical ways to respond. These individuals pursue art practice and curricula that carry the subversive values of freedom, autonomy, and resistance against dominant structures, institutions, and policies that inflict harm upon multiple disfranchised and minoritized communities. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is one example of art activism that carries these subversive values for social justice art (educational) practice (Figure 1). Since 2013, the BLM movement has grown on a national and global level following the of deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and George Floyd due to police brutality; BLM protests these injustices, as well as the systematic racism that causes them and has had an overwhelmingly severe impact on Black communities, which was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the summer of 2020, artists nationwide came together to create street art, signs, murals, and photography to protest these issues (Figure 2). This art movement attempts to subvert the dominant history and power that perpetuates American exceptionalism and White-centered structures and discourses. This artistic component of BLM offers us a learning opportunity that highlights the counternarratives through talking back or flipping the historical, cultural, and political narratives through public art venues.

Figure 1. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is one example of art activism that carries these subversive values for social justice art (educational) practice.

Figure 2. During the summer of 2020, artists nationwide came together to create street art, signs, murals, and photography to protest oppressive issues.

Such an art-based strategy of “talking back” as a counternarrative practice reminds me of bell hooks (1989). She shares her own reflection of the uneasiness and reluctance to speak the truth in public because of fear of punishment, which can lead to silence, while racism, sexism, and class exploitation operates in our everyday lives, particularly in those private spaces where personal experiences of being “wounded, hurt, [and] dehumanized” are taking place (p. 2). As such, these oppressive experiences are then forced to be kept in a private space. The disciplinary power enforces this normalization for speaking the truth only in private spaces rather than being allowed in a public space. She views this separation between the private and the public as an outcome of ongoing practices of domination (p. 2). This constitutes a major obstacle in fighting for social justice, as it may lead to silencing minoritized voices. Reading hooks’s insights, I raise a few questions: In what ways can our art educational praxis bridge the public and private space, which allows speaking the truth about the historical and social oppressions in relation to students’ lived experiences? What would it be like for our art educational praxis to move beyond the “disciplinary” public space that ignores and erases historical and personal truths and struggles?

Teaching itself can be viewed as a counternarrative instrument. But what we are teaching must be relevant to today’s world, and we also need a meaningful curriculum space that reflects students’ lived experiences. Teaching social justice art is necessary when seeking a counternarrative space where the talkback from both students’ and teachers’ experiences of racism, sexism, and homophobia that have been disregarded by social and educational systems is freely allowed. In the talking back, hooks (1989) invites us to understand resistance where strength and power emerge in conjunction with healing. In this resistance, we can learn to “be vigilant in the nourishment of [our] spirit, to be tough, to courageously protect that spirit from forces that would break it” (p. 7). This vision for meaningful resistance as an essence of counternarrative praxis is sustained with our critical inquires and a search for a better educational space for social equity. How do we restructure our educational policies, curricula, and pedagogies to counter the pressing social and educational inequities on a national and global level? What is the value of these counternarratives for achieving educational equity in art educational spaces? What constitute counternarratives in art educational praxis? How can counternarratives create art educational change? While these questions are not something we can answer immediately, nor provide instant solutions for, they can serve as a threshold for social justice art praxis as a way to guide art educators in designing counternarrative-based educational spaces and approaches.

The first article in this issue, “Bending Toward Justice: The Falling Monuments and Rising Memorials of Montgomery, Alabama” by Mary Soylu, is a great illustration of critical counternarratives. It introduces the juxtaposition of Arise, an activist public sculptural work at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and the Confederate monuments in the city of Montgomery, Alabama. This juxtaposition provides a critical view for the monuments’ oppositional narratives—the public sculpture Arise with a collection of stories from descendant communities of being lynched deliberately counters the oppressive national narratives, while the Confederate monuments deliver racist orders, myths, and symbols. The article significantly provides an antiracist view and the possibility of counternarratives for rebuilding a new and just society while simultaneously deconstructing unjust racist systems. Next, Meng-Jung Yang and Kevin Hsieh’s article “Queer Eye for Disney: Unveiling LGBTQIA2S + Representations Through Visual Literacy” hints at the counterhegemonic potential for preservice teachers. It introduces art teachers’ visual analyses of LGBTQIA2S + representations in five Disney animations as a teaching tool for the enhancement of critical visual literacy. With the lens of queering and intersectionality, it provides preservice teachers with ways of engaging in child-targeted media to uncover the dominant ideologies of gender and power dynamics for advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion. The critical counternarratives also alluded to in the article “Colorblinders Off, Asset-Based Perspectives On” by Christina Chin call for the necessary shift of educational approaches from normalized colorblind deficit models to asset-based models that reconsider antiracist art educational narratives. The article provides critiques of colorblind art educators’ deficit lenses that carry the universality of unconscious racial bias on BIPOC students, resulting in teachers setting low expectations and less demanding work while forcing them to assimilate into the White educational system. Instead, the article highly encourages an asset-based approach that highlights student strengths and their lived experiences as invaluable assets for academic learning that is relevant to their lives, prior experiences, and knowledge. This article offers significant guidance for art educators to consider for antiracist teaching. Lastly, visual journaling as a narrative of healing is introduced by Eva Coker’s article “Artmaking and Visual Journaling at a Community Cancer Resource Center.” From her own experience as a cancer patient, the author employs qualitative research and interviews to explore emotional and psychological aspects of visual journaling for a healing journey and provides recommendations for social–emotional learning. Her interviews with the cancer patients illustrate narratives of hope, self-awareness, and empathy toward healing that reflects social–emotional learning. Next, Carolina Blatt-Gross’s article “Revitalizing Art + Design Education Through Expanded Notions of Community-Based Art Education” discusses and recommends asset-based, trauma-informed teacher preparations grounded in community-based art education to build meaningful context for collaborative training programs for preservice teachers. The instructional resource, “Illustrating Community: The Mural Art of James Cochran” by Dan Li, shares teaching guidance with James Cochran’s mural art, offering an educational space as a response to the historical and contemporary issues within communities.