This exposition is funded exclusively by national funds through the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology within the project «2022.05056.PTDC»
2nd seminar_illustrating the absence
19th February 2024
Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto
ILLUSTRATION WORKSHOP
Students were asked to select a one-page proposal from the current textbooks of the Social & Environmental Studies of the 1st grade published in Portugal between 2016 and 2023/2024.
After the selection, each student had to think about the representation of absent identities and propose a new solution in the illustration, considering an antidiscrimination attitude.
The time available for the illustration was one hour, and they could present analogical or digital proposals. There was no limitation in scratching materials or dimensions, but the text should be relevant to the drawing.
THINKING DURING THE WORKSHOP
The 2nd Seminar of the [in]visible project concentrated, in the first stage, on observing how thirteen students from the first year of the Master in Illustration, Edition and Print (from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto) reacted to illustration proposal on the absent identities. The initial impact was not to begin the illustrations but to question critically, in groups or individually, the images and texts that strengthen them or limit their interpretation and conducting to stereotypes. Some of the students started to write, cross out images and texts, jot down thoughts and exchange these between them to feel what seemed to be uncomfortable as textbook readers. These appointments can be traced in the single-page proposals and on isolated pages of the textbooks.
From this point, focusing on the illustration task, the students felt the difficulties in giving suitable visual suggestions to represent invisible identities. The attempt to correct the instructions in the texts was one of the focuses, evidencing how the problem is somehow structural. The words limit the future actions – the illustrations and the interpretations.
On the other hand, two fundamental difficulties in the act of illustrating were perceived from the words of the students: the fear of creating new stereotypes and the doubt about exposing existing or ideal realities. The recognition of the impossibility of representing all types of identities in one single or even double page could be overcome by intentionally spreading the diversity (of ethnicity, gender/sexuality, ages, capacities, social classes, etc.) all over the textbook. The focus on only one or two representations raises questions about the felt absences. Would the intentional mixture of roles between (binary) genders in representations help erase differences? Should the future representations of identities have preferences on ambiguities and abstractions?
The visual essays were designed more as an exercise in questioning than searching for an effective solution. In the difficulty of representing identities free from discrimination, passing the task of illustration into the hands of the children (who will be using the textbook) could be a possibility with potential. But what will the children represent? Their real worlds or their ideal worlds?
The illustrators face the challenge of constructing and deconstructing images. Their background interferes with their proposals, but political responsibility should be considered in the representations of identities, contributing to the inclusion of diversity.
