Showing|Learning

For one of my classes in my first semester of college, my final project was to create an installation demonstrating how I learned in the class. Throughout the semester I was perpetually frustrated with the course. It was based in art history, but the art we looked at and the conversations we had remained centred around whiteness. That is a story for another post though. The installation had to include an image of ourselves as learners, objects, and a quote. I have compiled some photographs of this final project, my statement, and audio from my final presentation.

Presentation Audio

“The world is nothing but my perception of it. I see only through myself. I hear only through the filter of my story.”

-       Byron Katie

In Psychology, there are two techniques that are recommended to help in learning and memory: elaboration and self-reference. With elaboration, the learner makes multiple connections to a stimulus. With self-reference, the learner makes these connections to their own experiences. My time in How Do I Look highlighted through absence how difficult it is for me to learn if I cannot elaborate and self-reference. One of our stimuli, the Womanhouse project, was a feminist art project focused on womanhood; but the white, suburban womanhood it portrayed was not something that resonated with me. The layers of my experience as a Black, Caribbean woman from a working class background made it difficult for me to connect with their narrative. One of the class’s texts, the introductory chapter of Practices of Looking, also discussed the value of self-reference, though it presented it in a different way. That initial chapter introduced the idea of ideologies as the beliefs and values that inform how an individual interprets the world. The ideas self-reference and ideologies as integral to learning and understanding stuck with me, and became the basis of my image of myself as a learner.

My piece, Iris, highlights these aspects of my learning process in two ways: the layers and the lens. Iris is made up of two parts to resemble an eye. The first is the iris, which is made of strips of my written assignments. The strips overlap, but the overall shape is confined within a concentric border. This represents elaboration the way every new assignment would build upon existing knowledge and understanding of what I knew.  The layers create a wide aperture, the centre of which is a black velvet circle, representing the way I absorb new knowledge. The entire image of the eye communicates the idea of learning and ideologies creating a lens.

The objects I chose tie my image and my in-class learning together again. I chose my annotated printout of the first chapter of Practices of Looking and my reading glasses. My copy of Practices is heavily annotated, often with notes that reference my experiences and perspectives. My glasses–which I only use when I work– echo the central theme of looking through a lens.