Unlearning imperialism through artistic remediation: a critical pedagogy approach

Abstract

Analysing art that emerges from remediation can be a form of critical pedagogy in and of itself. This article focuses on art forms that involve remediation as a strategy of the critical pedagogy of “unlearning imperialism” (Azoulay 2019). The aim is to examine the role of the adaptive process of artistic remediation (by which new media technologies incorporate, reinterpret, and reference older media forms) in conceptualising and developing a critical and engaged approach in the classroom to the inequities in knowledge production, mediation, and sharing. The strategic approach to unlearning imperialism is combined with Ariella Azoulay’s idea of “potential history”. This frames the analysis of three artworks that are, in different ways, linked to photography, either as photography-to-painting or painting-to-photography remediations. The first artwork discussed is Roxana Manouchehri’s Power (2014), a neo-Victorian photography-to-painting remediation depicting Queen Victoria and Princess Tadj es-Saltaneh; the second and third artworks are Jan Banning’s Immigrant (Jamaican) Olympia with Dutch Servant (2011) and Raeda Saadeh’s Who Will Make Me Real? (2003), both painting-to-photography remediations of Édouard Manet’s 1863 oil painting Olympia.