For the four reflective blog posts, I have
- Summarised the experience or resource in question
- Reflected on its relevance and application to your own context
- Specified your next steps in applying the learning
- Signposted to further information through hyperlinks and/or images
- Used Harvard referencing where appropriate
4 ‘The New Life’: Mozambican Art Students in the USSR, and the Aesthetic Epistemologies of Anti-Colonial Solidarity
Polly Savage
Mozambican Art Students in the USSR, and the Aesthetic Epistemologies of Anti-Colonial Solidarity
Returning
On arrival in Maputo in 1986, the Tashkent graduates were allocated teaching posts at ENAV (plate 10), roles they held until their retirement in 2021 (Cejuma and Tisonto) and 2022 (Raimundo). They all described a restless energy for developing the art school: ‘the socialist system had been really good at teaching us how to work’, remembered Cejuma. ‘This proved to us that we were comfortable as socialists, because our life was consumed by work, without caring about remuneration […] that dynamism also helped things a lot’.77 They soon found, though, that this discourse was out of step with the state narrative. Frelimo
Training in the socialist world offered artists a path for developing a decolonial creative practice that was no longer beholden to imperial canons, and a route to cultural professionalization that bypassed the former metropole.
What is the relationship between knowledge, truth, belief, reason, evidence, and reliability?
‘The New Life’: Mozambican Art Students in the USSR, and the Aesthetic Epistemologies of Anti-Colonial Solidarity by Polly Savage (Sonali)
– Savage creates a narrative history of a few art students from Mozambique who received bursaries to pursue higher arts education in the USSR. This paper highlights experiences and voices often not heard in academic scholarship
– Explores relationship between art and politics
– Who defines what is art? Can art be taught and examined in formal institutions?
– The centre of power’s privilege – students being made to learn Soviet politics and history but Soviet not looking outside itself – the teachers not bothering to learn about the countries their students are from. Similarly, US and UK can be insular regarding their media and cultures. Also, related to complexities with teaching international classes as we do. Do students who research histories and movements from privileged cultures have advantages when being assigned supervisors, as opposed to others who have supervisors who can focus on the research methodology but won’t have as much contextual knowledge?
exeprience of students experinece education in another culture.
a lot of challenge of moving to another society
i.e don’t even know how to hold the brush
best student grandauted with best grade, got negative feedback in first year. he mentioned it depressed him (negative effect) language barrier
in first year obvious who was from who, by secound year less so – gwen: patience needed for international student, diuffernt walks of life, allow to amke them mistake.
found help with others
talking about the journey, recived shcolarship from socialit country, all the amrking critierai from russian view, difficult for students to rectify with there own culture.
Leave a Reply