Critiques

Researchers Billie Lee and Judith Leeman gave a workshop in Nov. 2020 titled Retooling Critique, where they proposed ways to make the critique space and process more welcoming and less harmful to racialized students.

Both of them have contributed essays to the collection Beyond Critique: Contemporary Art in Theory, Practice and Instruction (eds. Pamela Fraser and Roger Rothman, 2017) which is available as an ebook from ECU’s library.

The Room of Silence is a short film created by students at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) about the experience of critiques by minority students. (2016, dir. Eloise Sherrid, in collaboration with co-producers Olivia Stephens, Utē Petit, and Chantal Feitosa, and the organizing efforts of the student group Black Artists and Designers). This film is a great way to start conversations about critique practices with your students:

- developed by faculty member Diyan Achjadi in support of a Critiques workshop held in Sep. 2020

Who is the critique for, and who is being left out of the conversation?

When are we placing racialized and minoritized students in the position of needing to explain or represent their identity? (and does this happen to the non-minoritized students in the room?)

When are we upholding white-supremacist approaches to art making and to art contexts in teaching? Or colonial understandings of cultural production?

What practices as being validated, and what practices are being dismissed?

What biases in our language, our sources, our framing, our responses to work show up in our critiques, our assessments, and our grading?

What are the relationships between the critique as a space for looking at work and having a generative dialogue around the work; and with the critique as a tool for assessment?

If a critique is a tool of assessment, how do we make sure that the assessment is not biased and thus contributing to systemic racism in the university?