Abstract
In the early 1960’s, backed by the force of the US Housing Renewal Act, the thriving Black neighborhood of Linnentown in Athens, Georgia was demolished to make room for University of Georgia luxury student dorms. Just one of countless acts of state sponsored violence committed against Black communties in the wake of chattel slavery (Sharpe, 2017), it calls attention to the ways that the history of slavery has been ignored, covered up, and completely erased in the US. Yet, in the case of Linnentown, local activism spearheaded by Linnentown descendants gained traction with the local government, who created the Justice and Memory Project to explore avenues for atonement. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of public art in teaching about and making visible the legacies of slavery. We provide a brief history of Linnentown and describe an interdisciplinary graduate course that the authors taught centering the Linnentown Mosaic Project as a socially engaged public art project. Unlike modernist conceptions of public art designed and installed by commissioned artists, often from outside the community, the Linnentown Mosaic Project involves communities in all aspects of the work, from conceptualization to installation. We discuss the dialogue that happens around artmaking in our emergent process (brown 2017). We reflect on our work as transpedagogical, a blending of art and pedagogy (Helguera, 2011) aimed at making visible lessons of slavery through collaboration, dialogue, and making.
Presenters
Lynn Sanders-BustleAssociate Professor of Art Education, Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, Georgia, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
Socially engaged art, Critical pedagogy, Community-based art, Public art
