Speaker
Description
Artists are the voice of the marginalised, oppressed and silenced. This paper focuses on visual meaning-making processes of South African Visual Art Education students by critically exploring their contemporary artworks (ranging between 2019 and 2024), created during their final practical year-project. These works portray contemporary real-life issues dealing with social ills. By integrating trans- and interdisciplinary approaches, students give agency to those whose voices are often silenced. By critically analysing the works, I rely on semiotics, intertextuality and other arts-based analysis methods and theories, such as those by Berger (1972) and Mirzoeff (2023). The findings highlight the significance and effect of creative and innovative thought in the work of art education students, as well as their strong sense of accountability and social justice. This paper concludes that by bringing awareness to shortcomings and agency to those whose voices are silenced, art education has the potential to build harmony in unity.
CV
Deléne Human, PhD (Art History), MA (Fine Arts), BA (Fine Arts), PGCE (SP & FET) is a visual artist and senior lecturer in Art Education at the Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria. Her research interests include visual meaning-making processes, as well as censorship and proscription of the Visual Arts in South Africa. Human has published in the fields of Art History and Art Education and is an experienced postgraduate supervisor. She is involved in various trans- and interdisciplinary, national and international projects. She is also a practicing artist, who specialized in sculpture and installation artworks.
