Invisibility and In/di/Visuality: The Relevance of Art Education in Curriculum Theorizing

Abstract

This article investigates how representation attaches meaning to bodies, how certain bodies are categorically misrepresented and masked from normativity, and proposes a curriculum theory affording the agency of the misrepresented to de-mask invisibility. Brief historical narratives of three kinds of invisibility are presented as they are manifested in educational practice and visual culture – masking those deemed to occupy lesser physical bodies, lesser bodies of knowledge, and bodies lesser-than-normal. The author argues the relevance of art education as a transformative pedagogical practice that can inform and promote social significance, or what the author terms as in/di/visuality, the agency to reinterpret misrepresented physical or conceptual bodies. In the face of masking practices that unleash the squalls of invisibility and inequity throughout sites of curriculum practice and contemporary visual culture, the exercise of in/di/visuality acts as a watershed, displacing invisibility and affording a greater breadth of inclusion in educational concerns.