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Landscape and identity : three artists/teachers in British Columbia

University of British Columbia

In this interdisciplinary study, narrative portraiture is used as a methodology to depict three visual artists who draw on their lived experience, traditions and values to engage viewers, through their artwork, about issues of landscape and identity. I argue for an educative paradigm applied to art practice that seeks individual and social/cultural transformation within and across communities through pedagogical processes that recognize diverse audiences. Questions guiding this study are: How do the artists' ideas and practices relate to living in British Columbia and the representation of the land? What are their motivations and strategies for expressing those ideas? How are the roles of these artists and the roles of teachers linked? The study considers the ways in which Jin-me Yoon, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun and Marian Penner Bancroft foreground landscape in British Columbia as a complex phenomenon and as a powerful icon in Canadian culture. Through interviews and analysis of artwork, this study examines how these artist/pedagogues challenge artistic conventions, myths and historical narratives that have framed Western culture and influenced their experience. By employing and disrupting conventions of representations of the land, they construct new narratives concerned with issues of identity, the environment, Native land claims, and urban history. This research portrait of artists who attempt to inscribe a place for themselves and their communities within the life of the province, is also a portrait of 'place', or the complex interrelationship of people and the environment. As role models and spokespersons who link knowledge and culture, the artists share a desire'to foster understanding through postmodern art practices and dialogic pedagogical processes. This study acknowledges their dual role as artist and teacher, involving models of practice that aim to effect social change and environmental care. It examines how their work integrating art and education, reflects and attempts to shape the social, cultural and political landscape within shifting conditions of society today. This study aims to provide a greater understanding of artist/pedagogues and calls for an increased focus on a pedagogical role for artists in museums, schools and other community-based sites, particularly with respect to multicultural and environmental art education.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-07-02

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/9938

Art Education

University of British Columbia

UBCV

DSpace