Us-Them-Us: Artists Interrogate the Ambivalent Structures of Belonging

Abstract

Us-Them-Us was an exhibition held as part of the pre-conference to the Social Sciences and Humanities Congress 2016 of the Comparative and International Education Society of Canada at the University of Calgary, Alberta. The exhibition included the work of seven artists whose work engage in discourses surrounding identity and belonging. Their works disrupt the normative implicit curriculum of art education with its western, patriarchal bias. They open spaces to explore the intricate choreography that is required to be part of a society. This essay introduces the works in Us-Them-Us that form the visual essays included in this special issue. Each work pulls back the layers of the complex problem. Taken as a whole, they expose the implicit curricula that a society imposes on its members in order that they learn to belong.

Keywords: Implicit Curricula; Art Education; Art as Social Action