cultural identity, creative processes, and imagination

Cultural Identity, Creative Processes, and Imagination:Creating Cultural Connections Through Art MakingCora M. Marshall

What happens in art making processes that allow artists, who know little about their past or have multiple cultural perspectives, to use creative processes to expand and elaborate upon their

identities:“to express in fuller form” (Costello, 1995, p. 469)

“add details or information” (p. 429).

We all have a cultural identity that is formed by family, community, country, and the world in which we live. Even so, some seek to elaborate that identity by looking to the

past.

Obstacles that these researchers face include:

1. lack of recorded histories; 2. mis-documentation resulting from naming/renaming, miscegenetic prejudice, illegitimacy, and passing for the dominate race; and 3. loss of oral histories through acculturation (Rogers, 1942).

How do these ethnocentered artists get from here to there, that is, from wanting to claim or reconnect to an unknown cultural

past to doing so?

How do we investigate our cultural identity through art-making?

Imagination is the key to bridging that gap from “wanting to” to “doing so.”

IMAGINATIONan ability to enter the process of creating ideas, concepts, and experiences in the mind’s domain without the presence of touch, taste, sight, or other senses (Henricus & Van Gerwen, 1996).

a facility to “create and rehearse possible situations, to combine knowledge in unusual ways, or to invent thought experiments” (Blackburn, 1994b, p. 187).

“summons up visions of better state of things, an illumination of the deficiencies in existing situations, a connection to the education of feeling, and a part of intelligence” (Greene, 2000, p. 272).

These processes involve a holistic way of approaching how to incorporate cultural experiences into the art curricula.

1. IMAGINING-THAT: THE SPIRITUAL LEVEL AND AESTHETIC ANTECEDENTS

…to imagine that individual events or objects consolidate to create a phenomenon, whether based on perception or not.

Imaginal-worlds form when we imagine-that.

In these worlds we are free to illuminate, validate, and disambiguate cultural identity in invented landscapes.

In the process, if these worlds transcend our immediate circumstances and affect our inner self, then spiritual connections may occur.


SPIRITUALITY

“spirituality covers the whole range of life, including but going beyond humans” (Amon Eddie Kasambala, 2005).

“incorporates all dimensions of human and cosmic life” (Masamba ma Mpolo)

“can be understood as the ability to experience connections and to create meaning in one’s life” (Jane Fried, 2001)

These spiritual connections can give artists access to aesthetic antecedents heretofore unavailable.


By imagining-that, we can create imaginal worlds in which to make meaning.

Tsinhnahjinnie enlarges and manipulates vintage photographs to re-contextualize family histories and to create imaginal worlds in which she can examine identity through multiple lenses.

By imagining-that she can connect to her past and transport her black

Seminole relatives into an imaginal world where the

past is present.

2. IMAGINING-HOW: THE EMOTIVE LEVEL AND META-EMPATHY

“to do, think, or feel certain things, as well as how to move, behave, or speak in certain ways” (Casey, 1976, p. 46).

…does not require a specific experience such as, for example, imagining how it feels to be a slave or a Native American healer without having been one.


Such imaginings can evoke an emotional connection that may result in meta-empathic connections that are useful “at all stages of spiritual identity development” (Poll & Smith, 2003, p. 137).

Rather than depicting this horrific event in a

vengeful manner, Meta Warrick Fuller captured

the strength of character that allowed Mary Turner

to go against conventions and hold the members of

the mob accountable.

Imagining-how does not require a specific experience, such as seeing the actual hanging of Mary Turner. Imagining-how evokes meta-empathy, as it did for Fuller.


Imagining-how allows us to connect emotively and rouse emotion in ourselves and others. It allows artists to visually explore possibilities with passion, energy, and purpose.

3. SEEING-AS: THE INTELLECTUAL LEVEL AND SPONTANEOUS TRANSFORMATIONS

…a type of continuity between perceiving and imagining.

…involves taking a perception as a picture or image. . . . As an act of imagination, it differs from imagining-that in being more of a spontaneous transformation of a given perception, whereas the latter involves elements of deliberate supposal and hypothesis. (Brann, 1991, p. 164)

3. SEEING-AS: THE INTELLECTUAL LEVEL AND SPONTANEOUS TRANSFORMATIONS

Seeing-as as an intellectual process provides context through introspection.

4. IMAGINAL WORLD-MAKING: THE PHYSICAL LEVEL AND PERFORMATIVE AESTHETIC GESTURES

The act of emancipating what is inside by giving it a physical form and then putting it out into the world announces as well as reinforces cultural identities.

4. IMAGINAL WORLD-MAKING: THE PHYSICAL LEVEL AND PERFORMATIVE AESTHETIC GESTURES

For ethnocentered artists, externalization would consist of paintings, drawings, sculpture, video art, or other art forms that include cultural signs, symbols, and signifiers.

Performative aesthetic gestures proclaim and affirm an ethnic point of view that can allow artists to create, particularize, and integrate their desired cultural connections.

EDUCATIONAL APPLICATIONS

1. THE SPIRITUAL LEVEL (IMAGINE-THAT)

Using the enduring idea of exploring cultural identities through portraiture, teachers guide and engage students in uncovering important ideas at the heart of self-representation through a trans-cultural and cross-temporal journey to observe, discuss, and reflect on ways others have and may represent themselves.


1. THE SPIRITUAL LEVEL (IMAGINE-THAT)

The goal is for students to find their places of inspiration by imagining that they are of a particular time and place and to examine their responses to being there.


2. THE EMOTIVE LEVEL (IMAGINE-HOW)

Essential questions about identity may include: How do you see yourself? How does society see you? To which cultures do you feel connected? What imagery intrigues you? What visual elements or marks can you use to express your identity in your portrait? How can you use, extrapolate, invent, adopt, combine, and/or adapt these elements?


2. THE EMOTIVE LEVEL (IMAGINE-HOW)

The goal is for students to become emotionally invested in the process of discovery by imagining how what they create relates to their ideas about themselves, others, and the world around them.


3. INTELLECTUAL LEVEL (SEEING-AS)

students are given a chance to reflect critically so as to bring to light the underpinnings of their art making with regards to assumptions, biases, and perspectives (Artiles, Hoffman-Kipp, & Lopez-Torres, 2003; Weber, 2003).


3. INTELLECTUAL LEVEL (SEEING-AS)

The goal is to provide students with adequate information, ideas, and opportunities to synergize disparate elements into a synergistic whole in which they are seeing themselves, and their artwork, as culturally centered.


4. PHYSICAL LEVEL (IMAGINAL WORLD MAKING)

students should be provided with opportunities to not only examine connections to and deviations from previous concepts and notions of identity they held, but also they should be provided with opportunities to critically reflect on their place in the global community.


by focusing on the importance of cultural imaginings, visual exploration, and reflection prior to creating a final art object, art teachers can allow students to expand their views of the world as they explore possibilities in an authentic real-world way that is meaningful to them.


Through process such as these, teachers can guide students to expand their views of the world and elaborate on and expand their cultural identitites.

cultural identity, creative processes, and imagination

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