Ana Mae Barbosa and the Freirean “Triangular Approach”: A Case Study

DOI:10.5281/zenodo.16795617 | PDF 

Educazione Aperta 18/2025

This article analyzes the key aspects of Ana Mae Barbosa’s revolutionary and postcolonial approach to visual art literacy in educational contexts such as museums and schools. Using an interpretative methodology, the essay underlines the influence of Paulo Freire’s pedagogy on Barbosa’s “Triangular Approach” (i.e., contextualization, reading of the image, art production). This text underlines how the decolonial curriculum, the concepts of inclusiveness, and the encounter have characterized her projects, and they are fundamental for us today in a global society. The struggle against every oppression and the intercultural dialogue are some of the most significant landmarks of Barbosa’s democratic educational praxis. Dismantling the simplistic logic of “free expression” and “creativity,” she has introduced an epistemology of visual art teaching, breaking the boundary between museum and life and between arts and everyday life. One emphasizes how, for Barbosa, the art education curriculum has to respect children’s needs, development, interests, and the cultural features of the discipline. The importance of popular and Black art, interculturalism, and the democratization of arts and culture are equally important in her educational projects. This article stresses how Barbosa is one of the most prominent pioneers in Freirean and decolonial visual art literacy.

Keywords: Critical Visual Art Pedagogy, Triangular Approach, Decolonial Curriculum, Interculturalism, Freire.

Introduction

This essay analyzes the main aspects of Ana Mae Barbosa’s revolutionary and postcolonial approach to visual art literacy in formal and informal educational contexts. Using an interpretative methodology, one underlines the influence of Paulo Freire’s pedagogy (Barbosa, 2003; 2017; de Araujo and Oliveira, 2013) and his concept of problematization (Salort, 2017; Barbosa, 2022) on Barbosa’s “Triangular Approach” (Barbosa, 1985a; Cunha de Araújo, 2018). This text emphasizes the relevance of Brazilian popular culture, the estética antropológica (Barbosa, 2016) and the “anthropophagy” in Barbosa’s approach (Zanellato, 2017). One underlines how the promotion of the decolonial curriculum, the struggle against every oppression (Guerson, 2010; Peterson and Galvão, 2017), and the intercultural dialogue are the most significant landmarks of Barbosa’s democratic educational praxis (Rizzi and Silva, 2017). This text stresses how she is one of the most prominent pioneers in Freirean visual art literacy (Azevedo, 2016).

Ana Mae Barbosa: Life and Research

Paulo Freire teaches us to reject cultural segregation in education. Decades of struggle so that the oppressed could free themselves from ignorance taught us that a liberal education was only successful if participants in the education process were capable of identifying their cultural ego and taking pride in it (Barbosa, 2003, p. 35).

Ana Mae Barbosa (Rio de Janeiro, 1936) is one of the most prominent art educators, feminists, and radical thinkers in Brazil. She was Paulo Freire’s student in a course for training teachers, and she is well known for promoting the Freirean “Triangular Approach”[1] in Brazilian Art Schools and at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) of the University of São Paulo (USP). As she writes (cf. Barbosa, 2017), the encounter with Freire was decisive for her activity as an educator. Following Freire’s critical theory, she understood that teaching could be different from her personal lived experience at school in Brazil. At the beginning of her career, she worked in the Escolinha de Arte in Recife and she collaborated with the Federal University of Pernambuco for art education. After the coup, in 1965, she moved to Brasilia; in the city, she created the Escolinha de Arte at the University and taught future art educators. The repression of the dictatorship pushed her, and her family, to move to São Paulo (see Barbosa, 2017). In the metropolis, she organized a new Escolinha de Arte. From 1970, she had international contact with other art educators and participated in the conference of InSEA (International Society for Education through Art) in Coventry (UK). During this meeting, Barbosa, with other educators, found the Brazilian section of InSEA, “SOBREART.” (cf. Barbosa, 1989, p. 174). She was the first Brazilian student to obtain a Ph.D.[2] in Art Education. Barbosa became a professor at the USP and she introduced research on art pedagogy in a post-graduate arts program as well as in doctoral courses. She directed the Art Education Department of the MAC (1987-1993), and, for a long time, worked with pupils and adults at the USP. Every year, from 1986 to 1993, she won the prize for the best exhibition, and, in 1989, she won a critics’ award.

From the beginning of her studies, she supported women’s rights to study at university, in cultural fields, and the arts. At school and university, she experienced discrimination and humiliation by professors. Thus, Barbosa denounced the patriarchal culture and wrote numerous essays concerning women artists and patriarchal society in Brazil (see Barbosa, 1996; 2010; 2019). She considers herself a “radical feminist,” but not sectarian. According to her, the battle of the Feminist Movement of the 1970s was fundamental in raising discussions about a new institutional, political, and personal agenda concerning the relationship between the public and private spheres, handicraft and arts, sexuality and subjectivity as well as the representation of women’s bodies. At present, she continues her studies on critical art education and she is an active member of InSEA as well as the author of numerous essays (see also Barbosa, 2021) and books (cf. Barbosa, 1985a; 1985b; 2007). 

Some notes about Art Education in Brazilian Schools (1960s-2000s)

From the 1960s in the field of education, Freire’s “anthropological” model and his social “contextualism” was the most important tool to change Brazilian pedagogy and educational plans (see Barbosa, 1989). For Barbosa, it is also crucial to recall the important work of a group of teachers (Maria Inez Cabral, Rosa Sampaio, and Maria Lucia dos Santos) linked to Célestin Freinet’s movement.

It is equally pivotal to mention Noêmia de Araújo Varela, who directed and opened, with the artist Augusto Rodrigues, the Escolinha de Arte (in Recife and Rio de Janeiro). This experience was “the greatest modernist school of art education in Brazil” (Barbosa, 2019, p. 8). Despite the dictatorship (1964-1984), the Schools of Art resisted; however, the military government interrupted the work of the experimental schools and the evolution of pedagogical studies. Furthermore, after the coup, many teachers, like Freire, were victims of the regime’s persecutions. However, between 1968 and 1972, the Escolinha de Arte de São Paulo developed numerous and innovative educational plans for pupils. Under the influence of Freire’s “social contextualism,” (ibidem; Azevedo, 2016) their focus was on the improvement of students’ creativity, the analysis of elements of design, the development of the theory of perception, and critical thinking.

In 1971, visual arts, music, theater, and dance became mandatory in public schools, from primary to high school (Cunha de Araújo, 2018). However, the government did not consider art as a true school subject but only an “activity” (Barbosa, 2008, p. 10)[3].

From 15-19 September 1980, at the USP, there was an important event called “Art and Education Week,” during which three thousand teachers discussed the problems and the state of art education. Freire, who had recently returned from exile, was invited by Barbosa to speak (Zanellato, 2017)[4]. Teachers and thinkers introduced new lines of research in art education and, from 1983 onward many private and public schools adopted the “Triangular Approach”. Postmodernist theory and the triangular action are the bases of making, reading, and contextualizing images (Barbosa, 2022, pp. 1-16)[5]. As Barbosa writes (ivi, p. 1),

it was in the dialectical effort between the global postmodern discourse and the conscious process of cultural differentiation, also postmodern, that the Triangular Approach emerged in art teaching in Brazil (1980/1990).

In 1997, the new “National Curriculum Parameters” (NCPs) introduced new rules for art education to partially substitute the principles of the “Triangular Proposal” for Production, Appreciation, and Reflection (Grades 1-4: ages 7-10) and Production, Appreciation, and Contextualization (Grades 5-8: ages 11-14). As Barbosa argues, “the Brazilian NCPs, established by a Spanish educator, de-historicized the Brazilian educational experience and presented the plan as something novel and a recipe for the salvation of education” (Barbosa, 2019, p. 12). The theorization of the new NCPs ignored and dismantled the reforms promoted by Freire (1989-1990) and his theory on critical education. As Barbosa claims, this curriculum was “a true example of the banking education that Paulo Freire so rejected” (Barbosa, 2008, p. 19).

It must be acknowledged that mandatory instruction in Brazil (Ensino Fundamental: Fundamental Education)[6] is from the age of four to seventeen. In 2013, secondary education became part of the compulsory and free basic Brazilian education system. In 2015, art education reforms by NCPs[7] disappeared. Furthermore, in 2018, the Ministry of Education (MEC) officially abolished the obligation of art teaching in the curricula of high (senior) schools and, under the influences of corporations, aimed to cut the discipline from basic instruction altogether. Despite its obligation in mandatory grades, art education continues to be an irrelevant subject and “accessory” discipline in the curriculum. Thanks to the current Lula da Silva government and the Minister of Education, Camilo Santana, some subjects (i.e., Sociology, Philosophy, Arts, Physical Education, and Spanish) will be reintegrated into the school curriculum (Truffi and Murakawa, 2023).

The “Triangular Approach” and Paulo Freire’s influence

As mentioned before, Barbosa introduces the “Triangular Proposal” in her approach to visual art education. Barbosa’s postcolonial approach aims to develop three intertwined actions: 1. contextualization; 2. reading of the image (decodification); and 3. art production (creation). The interchangeable combinations of these actions enable the reading of images and the production of art in formal and informal contexts of education. These didactic strategies can be described as follows:

1. Contextualization involves learning to acknowledge and analyze the history and contexts of artworks or images as well as their authors. This phase is helpful to connect and deepen the knowledge of art and the present. Barbosa transforms the Freirean verb “to know” into “to contextualize.” The process is close to Freire’s reading of the world and the social context. As Freire writes, the critical comprehension of a text emerges through the interaction between text and context (see Freire, 2005). For Barbosa, the dialogue between the learner and the artwork becomes a “decodification” of history and the present, the research on the picture and oneself. This contextualization has to open an interdisciplinary dialogue among ecology, sociology, biology, geography, anthropology, and intercultural perspectives. In other words, the teaching of art history has to enhance its specificity through other disciplines.

Barbosa’s emphasis on contextualization energizes the reading of artworks (Salort, 2017, pp. 181-191). Furthermore, the triangular perspective proposes situated discoveries and enjoyment through both cognitive and affective strategies. According to Walter Mignolo (Mignolo and Gómez, 2017), these dynamic processes of analyzing artworks have to be in relation to Latin American contexts of “decoloniality” (“multiple racial, ethnic, sexual, epistemic, economic, and gender relations”: see also Salort, 2017, p. 187). Indeed, in Barbosa’s eyes, art education has the task to interlace the “multi-plurality” of Brazilian culture with the pedagogy of liberation. The “Triangular Proposal” helps educators and students to combine information, experimentation, and decodification (Barbosa, 2007, p. XXXIII; Rizzi, 2017).

2. Reading images involves the exploration of the language of images, codes, and visual grammar. This aims to develop students’ sensitivity, perception, and appreciation for artworks. Its knowledge and tools help students to debate problems and questions, to compare artworks of different periods and artists, to interpret images in a personal way, and understand issues of an interdisciplinary nature. As Barbosa points out, “this reading involves critical analysis of the work’s materiality and aesthetic or semiotic, or gestalt or iconographic principles” (Barbosa, 2007, p. 37). Furthermore, reading is a social, cultural, and political act; that is, it is a moment of analyzing the world and autobiographical reflection. The grammar of the picture becomes a “metalanguage,” and its interpretation lives through relationships and multiple links (visual, contextual, hidden). Barbosa argues that it is always necessary to show to children the artist’s original works or pictures. In 1970s Brazil, this idea was revolutionary. Teachers promoted free creativity, but without showing the images of artists.
3. Art production involves learning the stages of artistic creation while avoiding copying the masters. Artworks are useful as landmarks, but the crucial points are free expression and creativity to make new (i.e., personal) work. Concerning the art-making, Barbosa (ivi, p. 37) underlines that this process also

requires contextualization, which is the awareness of what has been done, just as any reading as a process of signification requires contextualization to go beyond the mere apprehension of the object.

Barbosa clarifies that the systematization of new art teaching should include an acknowledgement of relationships with the colonial past. According to her and Milena Guerson (Guerson, 2010; Peterson and Galvão, 2017, p. 290), in the contemporary era in Brazil, despite there being dialogue between “doing” and thinking as well as popular and erudite culture, the cultural heritage of colonialism persists in society. Barbosa’s model (Barbosa, 1985a; 2014) uses disciplined approaches in combination with creativity. In this way, problem-solving finds multiple and creative solutions to questions. An artistic response is generative of new and different creative products. The content of the latter broadens the introspective power of the product and increases the possibility of more affective feedback. Barbosa’s idea of “openness” concerning the reading of artwork implies a focus on perception, analysis (i.e., abstraction), and critical ability. The perception, with its complexity and flexibility, is the basis of thinking, and this action permits us to learn the conditions to think and propose a new reality. Teachers can help students to overcome visual stereotypes. They have to invite learners to focus on a more general point of view of the surrounding reality to transform it in a personal way.

One can observe that the Freirean roots are evident through actions such as 1. relating art to reality, or the perception of the object in the context of the community; 2. relating the idea of the visual and personal stories from lived experiences; 3. relating the analysis of individual experimentation through magnifying the details and the fragmentation (the relationship between the parts and the whole); 4. the possibilities of transformation and the combination of graphic and material elements. These pedagogical processes underline the existence of numerous points of view, elevate personal interpretations, and highlight some special fragments of collective and personal experience.

Barbosa privileges the problematization and interpretations that art can raise among learners. As she maintains, the curriculum of art education has to respect children’s needs, development, interests, and the cultural features of the discipline. Like Freire’s approach, Barbosa’s “triangulation” also invites educators to “reinvent” it. The latter aims to generate a double action of knowledge: epistemological and systematic. The first addresses the art pedagogical strategies such as artistic production, the analysis of visual culture, and its contextualization. The second wants to connect different art educational experiences such as “the Escuelas al Aire Mexican Libre, the Critical English Studies and the movement of aesthetic appreciation coupled with DBAE… American” (Barbosa, 2007-2014, pp. 33-34; see also Barbosa, 1990, p. 84)[8].

Barbosa was fascinated by the Open-Air Schools of Painting (1913-1933) in Mexico and the intellectual works of José Vasconcelos and Adolfo Best Maugard (1891-1964)[9]. This was the first example of postmodern art education since it focused on the integration between art-making and art knowledge (cf. Barbosa, 2014). As Barbosa asserts, like in Mexico, it is important for Brazilian art education to foster local art production, artisanal expressions, and personal visual grammar as well as handcraft traditions.

Furthermore, Barbosa attributes a central role to Freire, both for general, pedagogical references and for the specific theorization of the “Triangular Proposal”. As she underlines, Freire teaches us that education is a process of critically seeing ourselves and the world (cf. Barbosa, 2004). He valorized the imagination, but also suggested dialoguing with social conscientization. Freire’s praxis of teaching and learning is also crucial to understand the aim of the “Triangular Proposal”: art education as transformative action. Art educators have “to teach to see, to analyze, and to speculate” (Barbosa, 1985a, p. 71). Rightly, Azevedo observes that there is an evident link to Freire: the act of seeing develops the creative process and demands “the creation of the textual plot as a historical and social expression” (Barbosa and Coutinho, 2009, p. 336; Azevedo, 2016).

For Freire, like for Barbosa, knowledge is the result of the awareness of experience. The world and one’s culture, language, beliefs, needs, values, and individuality all influence as well as mediate education and the methods and content of learning. As she writes, people asked Barbosa during a conference of the United States Society for Education through Art (USSEA) in Phoenix (2000):

How do you, in Brazil, free yourselves from the DBAE copying syndrome, which is dominating in Asia? I answered: We were students of Paulo Freire and with him we learned to reject the colonizing copy of models, and to choose, adapt, reconstruct, reorganize from direct experience with reality, with the culture that surrounds us and with a wide repertoire of theoretical points of reference, intellectually denationalized, but chosen by us, without the imposition of the dominant power (Barbosa, 2005, pp. 3-4; cf. Cunha de Araujo and Oliveira, 2013, p. 74).

Barbosa overcomes the formalist tendency of Modernism and adopts a post-modernist cultural approach. She theorizes and applies art education through some paradigms of cultural studies and critical pedagogy. For her, postmodernism privileges “elaboration” as a process of creativity. The consciousness of an aesthetic experience is in relation to the meaning of the subject who questions the artwork. The linkages between arts and emotions, rationality, the personal and social spheres of the subject are essential for the authentic formation of critical thinking. As Barbosa claims,

If we intend an education that is not only intellectual but mainly humanizing, the need for Art is even more crucial to develop perception and imagination, to capture the surrounding reality and develop the creative capacity necessary to change this reality (Barbosa, 2007-2014, p. 5).

Barbosa considers economy, historical events, politics, and social models intertwined with the fantasy and imagination of art products. Barbosa affirms:

We built the story from each work of art examined by the children, establishing connections and relationships between other works of art and other cultural manifestations (ivi, p. 19). 

MAC (1987-1993): the “estética antropológica”

Barbosa proposes an intercultural approach both to art education and the curatorial organization of exhibitions. Popular and Black art, as well as the democratization of arts, is equally important in her projects for the MAC. As she points out, “interculturalism” is the most proper term, rather than “multiculturalism.” The prefix “inter” describes the desire to interact with other cultures, to understand and appreciate the differences, to critically re-appropriate the “Other,” and to change one’s fixed positioning to overcome cultural hierarchies. Furthermore, she underlines that, in Brazil and the Global North, the focus has to be the re-construction of one’s own cultural identity. The notion of “cultural diversity” also becomes pivotal to re-think other cultures from a dialogical and global perspective. The goal of education is to study the “glocal” cultures and open a dialogue among them. The knowledge of the codes of different cultures, and social classes as well, is crucial to comprehend the “Other”.

At MAC (1987-1993), Barbosa organized counter-hegemonic exhibitions that focused on the “carnivalesque; potshards cans and scrap metal: peripheral art; jungle civility: myths and [I]ndigenous iconography in contemporary art; the forest; connectivity, art and the public and viaduct to Art” (Barbosa, 2016, p. 26). According to her, one can define this curatorial line estética antropológica (anthropological aesthetics: Barbosa, 2018, p. 18); that is, the

aesthetic quality that enriches the quality of life of the population that does not go to the Museum, but exercises, as John Dewey said, the aesthetics communication channel that is connatural to every human being (ibidem; cf. Barbosa and Alquezar Facca, 2017, p. 2).

Furthermore, Barbosa states and asks: “Aesthetic pleasure is not exclusive to the rich. But, where is the aesthetic pleasure of the great illiterate mass of Brazil?” (Barbosa, 2018, p. 18). In other words, she opens an important and daring discussion on the problematic relation between erudite and popular aesthetics (women, the working class, the poor, illiterates). The democratization of museums is a relevant part of Barbosa’s approach and is connected to her pedagogical theorization. The programs of the museum interrupted the logic of elitist curators to exhibit the “everyday aesthetics” as well as African and Indigenous art. According to her, class bias is one of the most prominent problems in Brazil and the Global North. The aim of cultural institutions, like schools and museums, should be the reduction of this class prejudice. As she observes, “In Brazil, for critics, the poor make handicrafts and the rich make art, no matter the quality, the historical seriality, the material, or even the conception” (ivi, p. 22).

One can say that Barbosa anticipates contemporary policies of interculturalism in Europe. Since the 1970s, she has also supported the importance of introducing intercultural and popular arts in every educational program to develop a dialogue between elitist culture and visual popular codes. Art education has to become a coherent instrument to mediate socio-cultural implications and reflect on communication critically. This cultural action helps to create true social mobility and “reconstruction.” Barbosa connects the cultural discussion on classism to colonialism in Latin America. As she claims, “in the Third World, we have to produce our own research, our own analyses and our own actions to overcome the existing class prejudices in our countries about the configurable cultural codes” (Barbosa, 2007, p. 88)[10].

Barbosa also used this approach for “Art Education and Ecology” projects at MAC. She referred to the “ecology of education” and “pedagogy of the environment” through these projects to create an ecologist counter-hegemony. Her program delved into connections between the present era and artworks of different periods to open a critical dialogue between everyday life, personal experiences, and art values. The program’s focus was on the perception and development of the environment as well as the aesthetic aspects of human intervention and nature. According to Barbosa, artists and art educators have the responsibility to protect and defend the environment against the attack of powerful and large companies (e.g., in Amazonia).

Barbosa’s suggestion that the museum is a “laboratory of arts” (Barbosa and Coutinho, 2009, pp. 13-22) was crucial for the planning of activities. Workshops and ateliers were pivotal to experiment with arts and its content and create continuity between school and museum. Concerning the experimentation of the “Triangular Approach” at MAC, Barbosa mentions various theoretical and practical roots for her training, such as Dewey’s concept of experience (Barbosa, 2005, p. 6; 2001)[11] the “cultural psychology” of Jerome Bruner (1960), the methods of British art educator Eileen Adams (see Adams, 1982) and the Indian artist Avtarjeet Danjal, and the reading of the world of Freire as well.

The Manifesto antropófago by Oswald de Andrade (1928, pp. 3-7)[12] is also a pivotal source for Barbosa’s approach; she insists on the importance of art education that is open to multiple references and cultural “cannibalizations.” As she writes, “cultural cannibalization is a way of being creative in the Third World, a way of overcoming cultural dependence” (Barbosa, 2005, p. 7). In the process of decolonization, it is impossible and culturally unsuitable to cancel connections with Europe. For Brazilian society, the contemporary aim is to find an intercultural equilibrium and rethink the history of exploitation, dialogue, and equality (cf. Barbosa, 2015). In art education, the concept of “anthropophagy” makes accessible multidisciplinary attitudes, transgressions, and productive distortions as well as helps overcome the borders among defined identities and categorizations. However, for fifty years, Barbosa has been denouncing the permanence of the legacy of colonial dependence from both external forces and internal metropolitan powers on the peripheries. Education reflects the same dependence on international and pedagogical models.

In light of Barbosa’s reasoning, there is no independence without the awareness of dependence. According to Freire, she invokes the necessity to practice “conscientization” and study the history of art education in relation to colonialism. The heritage of a sense of cultural inferiority prevents educators from using their own cultural tools. By avoiding romantic nationalism and the cultural “xenophilia,” she suggests

raising awareness to grasp the nature and implications of the models adopted from the metropolis and to understand [our] cultural specificities and institutional heritage. In possession of this knowledge or understanding, we can try to produce transformations in the "application" or operationalization of the foreign models, so that we can gain control over the influence (Barbosa, 2022, p. 7).

Conclusion

Through various theoretical influences, Barbosa has thematized and practiced a new critical approach to art education in Brazil. Her clever “anthropophagy” is a combination of original ideas with multiple models of education. She was able to apply the Freirean concept of “reinvention” in different contexts of Brazil to transform the social and cultural oppressions of her country. Freire’s ideas and teaching are essential for her approach to the oppressed. Barbosa’s concept of culture and schooling has always included the democratization of instruction for all people. The paradigms of “inclusiveness” and “the encounter” have characterized her projects, and they are fundamental for us, today, in a global society.

She has also dismantled the simplistic logic of “free expression” and “creativity” to introduce an epistemology of visual art teaching. She has struggled to reinstate dignity to art education and destroy stereotypes and the banalization of the discipline (e.g., memorization, copying, spontaneity, improvisation). Barbosa’s pioneering criticism of the old art teaching is still extremely pivotal for our times.

For her, in Brazil, the arts have been tools to overcome the permanence of colonialism and its cultural legacy. Nowadays, in Western society, her art pedagogy is useful to struggle with the hegemony of neoliberal culture and the different forms of oppression and exploitation. The critical reading and interpretations of images (Freire’s decoding) can become a cultural weapon to dismantle and interpret the dominant hegemony of mass media and social networks. The relevance of “contextualization” in Barbosa’s triangulation involves promoting artworks in relation to children’s backgrounds and skills. Art becomes a tool for developing visual perception and social awareness, knowledge of the world, and sensitivity to the environment.

The creative process of combination and recombination of Freire’s literacy programs is close to Barbosa’s idea of creativity. Every explanation is connected to life experiences, personal interpretation, and the problematization of visual reading and topics. Barbosa’s emancipating project addresses the development of consciousness concerning the nature of objects, cultural codes, the roots of the processes, and relationships between pictures and phenomena in real contexts. This Freirean approach to art education also aims to change reality and stimulate new worldviews. In the atelier, the comparison of museum art, images of daily life, catalogues, and pictures by different artists was an avant-garde practice in Brazil between the 1970s and 1990s, and, today, it is still innovative and current practice. One of Barbosa’s most important democratic proposals is the breaking of the boundary between museum and life, as well as between arts and everyday life.

The emphasis on “anthropophagy” has helped her comprehend the importance of bridging Western and Brazilian popular culture. Barbosa’s central concept of “interculturalism” and educational policy at MAC are revolutionary, precursory, and relevant today. She has also used the idea of the global and local to create a new dialogue among cultures. In this process of interpreting the “Other,” there is an important Freirean insight: the role of the subject and autobiography as crucial elements of art education. The faith in art to humanize is also pivotal for the postmodern encounter between subjectivity and “outricity” (Barbosa, 2016, p. 24)[13]. For her, teachers have the duty to reflect on language, as well as, in Western countries, the history of colonialism and contemporary racism(s) in their art education programs. Her Freirean concept of “conscientization” is central to developing decolonized visual art teaching programs. As Barbosa states (2022, p. 2),

contextualization is a process of identification and searching for identity. The nature of contextualization depends on historical times, differentiation, social concerns, the ideology of the teachers, the life of the students, dreams, and any other knowledge, no matter classification, that can illuminate human life.

Barbosa’s cultural, social, and critical approach is closely aligned with Freire’s insight “to read the word to read the world” with the goal of transforming the oppressive reality. Through this approach to culture, the reader is an active subject in the process of interpretation and becomes the “recreator of the author” (Barbosa, 2022, p. 5).

Barbosa’s creative process is often accompanied and preceded by outdoor activities that invite students to engage with the surrounding world and the local community. This aspect also certainly has a Freirean matrix and evokes Freire’s statement to be in and with the world. Barbosa’s insistence on the possibility of exchanging actions in the “Triangular Approach” is in line with the fluidity of Freire’s thought in his literacy courses. Indeed, she invites us to avoid rigid sequentiality or hierarchy when investigating images.

As a result of what has been written, one can argue that Barbosa’s critical and contextualized reading of cultural expressions shows she is one of the most important and radical pioneers in Freirean visual art literacy.

Notes

[1] As one will analyze, Barbosa’s “Triangular Approach” proposes a new approach to visual art education based on making, reading, and contextualizing images. Freire’s pedagogy is one of its theoretical bases. All translations are by Gisella Vismara unless otherwise noted.

[2] In 1977, Barbosa followed her husband to the USA, and Freire suggested she enroll at Boston University (USA). She obtained a Ph.D. at BU and then returned to Brazil.

[3] Barbosa points out that the introduction of this reform “Diretrizes e Bases da Educação” was influenced by the ideological theories of US educators after the “MEC-USAID Agreement” between Brazil and USA. See Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education no. 5.692 (1971); Chamber of Deputies of Brazil, 1971.

[4] The title of Freire’s speech was Portrait of the Father by the Young Artists (O retrato do Pai pelos Jovens Artistas). He described the process of learning and the approach of education with his children (all involving art education). Unfortunately, we did not find documents or records concerning Freire’s speech.

[5] Barbosa explains her Postmodernism as follows: “[…] as Homi Bhabha says, our existence today is marked by the gloomy feeling of survival, living in a present that has no proper name, but is designated by a prefix that we add to the past. It is the prefix ‘post’ of Postmodernism, postcolonialism, postfeminism, etc. We explicitly want to transcend the past without setting it aside. The theory of recognition that sustains the persistent post-colonial, post-utopias of our time was configured in the ‘Third Space’ of Homi Bhabha, in the fight against the cultural stereotype of Edward Said, in the secondary alterity of Sanford Budick, in the policies of recognition of minorities suggested by Charles Taylor and Susan Wolf, in defense of visual syncretism undertaken by Moshe Barasch, in the libertarian approaches to culture such as a well-designed ‘quilt’ by Lucy Lippard and many other elucubrations of theorists of the cultures, committed to post-colonial movements in Latin America as Paulo Freire, Walter Mignolo, Anibal Quijano, Nora Merlin, Ailton Krenac, Laura Catelli, Gabriela Augustowisky, etc.” Barbosa sent this to the article’s author and specified that the text in the attachment was unpublished (September 19, 2022, pp. 1-16). She wrote it is “a text explaining my relations with Paulo Freire (unpublished).”

[6]Law No. 12.796/2013 amended the National Education Guidelines and Framework Law (LDB) No. 9.394/1996. Article 4 of this new LDB establishes that compulsory basic education includes Preschool, Elementary, and Secondary education. This reform aims to ensure universal access to education and promote educational equity. See Law No. 12.796/2013. www.camara.leg.br (accessed January 14, 2024).

[7] With the creation and implementation of the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC), the PCNs were progressively replaced as the official reference for developing school curricula in Brazil. The BNCC was established as a normative document guiding the construction of basic education curricula. See LDB No. 9.394/1996 and its amendments. The BNCC was regulated by the Ministry of Education (MEC) and approved by the National Council of Education (CNE). It was homologated in 2017 for early childhood and elementary education and in 2018 for secondary education. This change is grounded in the LDB, particularly in Article 26, which mandates the requirement of a common base to ensure equal learning rights for all students. Cf. Legislação Citada Anexada Pela Coordenação de Estudos Legislativos – Título V Dos Níveis e das Modalidades de Educação e Ensino. www.camara.leg.br (accessed January 14, 2024).

[8] The reflections of DBAE’s approach, which started in the 1960s, also had theoretical and practical ramifications and repercussions in Brazil’s artistic circles. Barbosa was also influenced by DBAE. It was controversial: on the one hand, she scrutinized the US proposal and appreciated its valorization of art education based on the reading of artworks and aesthetics; on the other hand, she critically contested the rigidity of this method and its sequential, didactic procedures. It can be said that DBAE’s theory supported Barbosa’s legitimate proposal to introduce pictures and artworks in art classes and promote ideas about how visual art is not fun and is not the result of spontaneity, genius, or, in some cases, copying masters. Furthermore, including the discipline of aesthetics and art history in teaching by DBAE was pivotal for Barbosa’s “Triangular Proposal”.

[9]José Vasconcelos Calderón (1882-1959) was one of the most prominent scholars of Mexican culture. In 1919, he became President of the University of Mexico. He wrote the crucial essay La Raza Cósmica (1925) in which he criticized the social Darwinist idea of race. He theorized a future “fifth race” in the Americas. In his theory, this was the result of the union of mixed races (“cosmic race”) for a future “Universópolis”. He also worked in the field of popular education and promoted syncretism and hybridism. See also Best Maugard, 1923.

[10]In 2003, in Brazil, Lula’s government introduced “reparative” multiculturalism as a mandatory subject. Thus, through this law, teacher’s programs in Brazil began to include content about Indigenous and African cultures for use in formal contexts of education. See laws n. 10.639/03 and n. 11.645/08.

[11]She asserts that Freire suggested studying Dewey’s ideas.

[12] Oswald de Andrade (1890-1954) was a member of the Brazilian “Group of the five” (Mário de Andrade, Anita Malfatti, Tarsila do Amaral and Menotti Del Picchia). He theorized that the “cannibalization” of the other cultures was one of the most prominent characteristics of Brazilian culture.

[13] As Barbosa writes, Augusto de Campos introduced this term.

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The author

Gisella Vismara is a visual art educator and teacher. She earned her BA in Art, Music, and Entertainment (DAMS) and a specialization in Visual Art Teaching at Bologna University. She taught Museum Art Education at Brera Academy of Fine Arts (2006-2019). She collaborates with the Lucio Saffaro Foundation. She has written books and articles concerning school, visual art education, cinema, art criticism, and literature. In 2023, she received a Ph.D. in Art Theory and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts (Vienna) with a dissertation on Paulo Freire and visual arts teaching.