Abstract

This paper aims to highlight the role of critical visual literacy, and artistic and aesthetic experience in visual communication for social and environmental awareness. Our awareness develops through our experience, and it broadens and develops through the communication of information on multiple levels with one another and the environment. As we share communication, we pass on this more enlightened perspective to those we next encounter. New experiences inform our constantly evolving awareness and communication with others. Our pre-conscious imaginative experiences become expressed in linguistic form and engaging in visual expression can further expand our experience. Consciousness is informed and constructed by many concepts, ideas, values, beliefs, feelings, fantasies, selective memories, etc., through comprehension of our experiences. These actions reflect the symbolic content of our expressions. Imagination as a pre-conscious and pre-linguistic form of experience and awareness is an expression of reality and is the primary impulse of art. In this paper, we advance the proposition that a constructive post-modern approach to visual communication needs to be implemented to replace the existing consumerist approach, so that we can develop a critical visual literacy that is supportive and advocacy for the environment. Visual experiences from childhood create a bond between our present self and our past experiences. We cite a case study that reflects on childhood experiences in relation to art and the natural landscape that foster a meaningful development of a sense of belonging, care and appreciation for the environment.