1

Social Justice in Art Education: An Example from Africa’s Last

Colony
Fernando Perez-Martin1 and Kerry Freedman2
1
University of Granada, Spain
2
Northern Illinois University, USA

CHAPTER MENU

Art Education and Social Interests, 2

Social Responsibility of Art and Design Curricula, 2
Art for Social Justice in Practice: A Western Saharan Example, 3
International Art and Human Rights Meeting in Western Sahara (ARTifariti), 5
Conclusion, 10
References, 11

Within the international landscape of art education are the many people who perform
acts of social justice. It is not only the actions of teaching and writing that characterize
this group; the group also generates and participates in social action through many other
activities related to the arts. It is the group’s work in schools and local communities, with
teachers and other educators, graduate students, members of various arts communities,
international communities, and even online, that mark the members of this group as
agents for social change.
An increased emphasis on social issues has emerged internationally in the visual arts
and in art education. This social shift in art education has included a broadening of the
field to embrace all of visual culture, including folk art, performance, environment, and
digital visual technologies, and to consider the range of visual culture forms, media, and
processes as having inherent capacities for teaching and learning (Freedman 2003). The
attention given to understanding visual culture is not synonymous with social perspec-
tives of art education, but they are related. It is contemporary changes in visual culture
and the power of visual culture to represent and influence social conditions that give
social perspectives of art and design education their agency.
Many artists, designers, and educators around the world have worked on, and con-
tinue to work on, various endeavors to promote social justice and social change inside
and outside classrooms. In the twentieth century, through artworks, publications,

The International Encyclopedia of Art and Design Education, Richard Hickman (General Editor),
John Baldacchino, Kerry Freedman, Emese Hall, and Nigel Meager (Volume Editors).
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118978061.ead103
2 Curriculum

teachings, educational initiatives, and so on, leading artists and educators (such as
Joseph Beuys, John Dewey, Paulo Freire, Guerrilla Girls, Hans Haackle, Friedensreich
Hundertwasser, Barbara Kruger, and María Montessori) provided means to understand
and challenge social injustices through the visual arts and education. Art educators
who led the social reconstruction of curricula in late twentieth-century art education
include Doug Blandy, Kristin Congdon, Elizabeth Garber, Kerry Freedman, Fernando
Hernández, Laurie Hicks, Vince Lanier, June King McFee, Ronald Neperud, and Patricia
Stuhr.
Social perspectives of art education emphasize a concern with issues and interactions
of identities and cultures, socioeconomics, political conditions, communities, and nat-
ural and human-made environments, including virtual environments (Freedman 2000).
Social perspectives of art education are based on the conviction that the visual arts
fundamentally influence all societies and cultures, and art in education aids people in
understanding sociocultural complexity, diversity, and connections. Such perspectives
influence art and its interpretations through the processes and contexts of elementary
and secondary schools, colleges and universities, community centers, and other forums
for art education inside and outside cultural institutions.
Social reconstructionist perspectives are also founded on the belief that art education
can enrich and improve people’s lives (e.g., Freedman 2000, 2003). The visual arts have
the power to change people’s minds. Artistic freedom allows people to communicate
in powerful ways to influence the beliefs and actions of others. This capacity to con-
vince can be seen in the range of visual culture, from fine art to advertising, which can
empower creators and viewers as well as demand critique. As a result, the promotion
and protection of art and art education, including in those environments where high
levels of sociopolitical conflict exist, are becoming increasingly important.

Art Education and Social Interests

People make visual art not merely for its formal, technical, or even personal value but
to communicate concerns, ask questions, interpret conditions, and make judgments
(Freedman 2000). They create works of art to illustrate social injustice, promote com-
munity change, and protect the environment. In other words, social issues in art and
design education are directly tied to learning about the world. Adults and young people
make art to express things about themselves, but they also make art to express ideas, atti-
tudes, and beliefs about large-scale social issues that act upon them and the world. The
primary purpose of such art is not therapeutic; it is not just about individual emotions
and needs. It is about the personalization and expression of social issues and a form of
social action (Freedman 2000). This distinction is critical to art and design education in
helping people to learn about and use the power of the visual arts.

Social Responsibility of Art and Design Curricula

Addressing social issues through an art and design curriculum can help learners to
understand relationships between objects and cultural identities, political actions, and
other events, conditions, and discourses outside school. Those who teach from a social
 Social Justice in Art Education: An Example from Africa’s Last Colony 3

perspective help learning communities to construct meaning within an increasingly

complex, powerful, and global visual culture.
The visual culture now seen globally has highly sophisticated aesthetics that are
seductive and have subtle social associations of meaning. As a result of contemporary
telecommunications, students learn daily from and about the visual arts through
a virtual learning environment. Intertextual and intergraphical connections among
widely distributed visual technologies, such as television, the internet, film, and video,
have become part of a virtual international curriculum. As a result, an important part of
contemporary art and art education involves understanding the potential for influence
between and among the forms of visual culture seen in museums, on television, in
movies and computer games, on the web, as packaging, and so on.
Historically, and in contemporary sociopolitical conditions on our planet, we find con-
tradictory values and actions when it comes to the arts and creativity. On the one hand,
people have created sublime pieces of music, art, and architecture and have pushed the
frontiers of science and technology beyond what was previously imagined. Humans have
demonstrated a great capacity for creativity, courage, and love. However, we still kill each
other in violent conflicts and endure unacceptable inequalities where millions suffer in
extreme poverty, die from curable diseases, and are forced to migrate from their com-
munities. We tolerate a world where exploiting other fellow human beings is normal
in the interest of economic benefit, and individuals in “developed” societies suffer from
high levels of stress, loneliness, alcohol and drug abuse, racism, and crime. The environ-
ment that sustains us, and all other beings with whom we share the planet, suffers greatly
from our actions and is damaged through, for example, product design and production.
It is the responsibility of art and design educators to work through the various forms
of curriculum to address the issues and problems of learners and improve social condi-
tions. Unlike the past focus of the field on the appreciation and production of fine arts,
contemporary art education that emphasizes social issues is concerned with criticality
and the production of visual culture as social commentary and a positive agent of social
change.

Art for Social Justice in Practice: A Western Saharan Example

The following sections focus on a particular example of social justice art education that
began in 2007 when one of the authors of this chapter (Fernando Perez-Martin) and
his Spanish colleagues established the International Art and Human Rights Meeting
in Western Sahara (better known as ARTifariti). The objective of ARTifariti is to use
art learning and practices to break the wall of silence that hovers over the forgotten
conflict of Western Sahara. Through peaceful means of collaborative and participative
artistic projects, each year foreign artists and refugees develop artworks and artistic
interventions to raise awareness of decades of struggle in order to create social pressure
to help bring this conflict to an end.

Background of the Conflict in the Western Sahara

The Western Sahara, situated in the northwest of Africa, is the last colony in the con-
tinent. It was a Spanish territory between 1884 and 1975, until Spain withdrew when
4 Curriculum

Franco, the Spanish dictator, was on his deathbed. Spain illegally ceded the territory to
Morocco and Mauritania, ignoring the ongoing pressure since the 1960s by the United
Nations, the International Court of Justice, and many countries around the world urging
Spain to carry out a formal decolonization process, as other colonizing powers had done.
(For this reason, the United Nations and the Spanish judiciary still consider that Spain
is, even today, the colonial power de jure of the Western Sahara; Criminal Chamber of
the National Court 2014.) Taking advantage of this climate of uncertainty, and with the
drive to control one of the world’s largest deposits of phosphates and fish, the Moroccan
government launched a massive campaign to conquer and annex the Western Sahara in
1975. This illegal invasion, dubbed the Green March, mobilized approximately 20,000
military personnel and 350,000 civilians using weapons, such as white phosphorous and
napalm bombs, against the Sahrawi civilian population (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2011). Thou-
sands of Sahrawi people fled for their lives, walking in extreme conditions for many days
until they arrived at the Algerian Desert and settled in refugee camps. Those who could
not leave were either murdered or have since had to live under Moroccan rule.
During the 1980s, Morocco built an enormous wall to stop the Sahrawi refugee popu-
lation from returning back to their homeland and to protect the phosphate mines it was
plundering. This heavily militarized berm, known as the Moroccan Wall or the Moroc-
can Wall of Shame, measures 2,700 kilometers (1,680 miles) and is the second longest
wall in the world after the Great Wall of China, as well as the longest defensive struc-
ture in the world (Action on Armed Violence 2015). There are over 7 million landmines
seeded on the Sahrawi side of the wall (San Martín and Allan 2007) as well as explosive
remnants of war, such as cluster munitions and rockets. These have caused more than
2,500 deaths and injuries so far; however, very few people know of the wall’s existence
(Action on Armed Violence 2015).
Although the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination has been reiterated in more
than 100 UN resolutions, the situation remains locked due to the opposition by Morocco
and the interests of some of its allied members of the UN Security Council, who have
vetoed those resolutions (International Association of Jurists for Western Sahara 2012).
The European Court of Justice (2016, 2018) has clearly stated in its judgments that the
Western Sahara and Morocco are two different territories, that Morocco does not have
any sovereignty over Western Sahara, and that any agreements between Europe and
Morocco do not cover the extraction of resources from the Western Sahara.

Daily Life: Over Forty Years of Oppression and Displacement

The year 2015 marked 40 years of injustice and violence for the Sahrawi people, who face
different types of suffering on each side of the wall on a daily basis. On one side of the
wall, the Western Sahara territory is occupied by Morocco. Further away on the other
side of the wall (beyond a strip of land called the Liberated Territories) are the Sahrawi
refugee camps in Algeria, where life is also extremely difficult.

Western Sahara Occupied Territories

The Occupied Territories constitute a vast piece of land on the shores of the Atlantic
Ocean, and these territories’ ongoing occupation by Morocco since 1975 is illegal under
international law (Briones 1993). Sahrawis who continue to live there are at constant
 Social Justice in Art Education: An Example from Africa’s Last Colony 5

risk of human rights violations, including torture, rape, raids of their homes and busi-
nesses, arbitrary detentions, and fake trials, with the intention of illegal incarceration
for those who are suspected of political activism (Dann 2014). Hundreds of Sahrawis
have disappeared and many others have ended up in places such as the infamous “Black
Prison” of El Aaiún, described as a “grave for the living,” where torture in the form of
beatings, burning, and electrocution is common practice (Martín-Beristain, Gil, and
Guzmán 2013). In addition to this human suffering, the rich natural resources of West-
ern Sahara (especially phosphates and fish) are being plundered extensively on a daily
basis by Morocco against international law. These crimes are rarely reported by inter-
national news outlets because the Moroccan authorities systematically stop and deport
journalists, lawyers, and other observers who are concerned about these injustices and
seek to aid the people.

Sahrawi Refugee Camps

The refugee camps are located in the middle of the desert in the Tindouf province of
southwestern Algeria and have become the “temporary” home of up to 200,000 Sahrawi
refugees. The living conditions are extremely harsh and the refugees rely almost com-
pletely on humanitarian aid for subsistence. People live in mud houses or in cloth tents.
There is no running water or electricity and temperatures can rise beyond 50∘ Celsius
in the summer and drop to below freezing in the winter. The government of the Sahrawi
Arab Democratic Republic, known as the Polisario Front and recognized by the United
Nations in 1979 as the representative of the people of Western Sahara, operates from
the camps in exile and maintains an active president, ministries, and other political and
social structures typical of any democratic country. Access to education is absent for
children beyond age 12, with the exception of one school. Some children continue on to
high school (and sometimes university) in Algeria, or other countries if they are lucky,
and then return to the camps to a precarious reality where hardly any jobs are available.
Many of those who were younger than 40 years of age in 2015 were born in the camps
and have lived all their life as refugees.

International Art and Human Rights Meeting in Western

Sahara (ARTifariti)
In 2007 a group of Spanish artists and scholars committed to social justice came up with
a simple yet provocative idea. One of the authors of this chapter, Fernando Perez-Martin,
was part of that initiative. The group wanted to use art as a tool to break the wall of silence
that conceals this forgotten conflict from public discourse. We approached the situation
with the intention of raising awareness and creating social pressure for a peaceful reso-
lution of the conflict. We felt a moral responsibility, given the historical role of Spain in
the Western Sahara, and embraced a contemporary decolonializing perspective to take
a stand and make people aware of this forgotten injustice. We wanted to aid social trans-
formation and believed that the language of art was a powerful communication tool for
education across borders. By addressing this particular conflict, we were also aiming to
highlight inequalities and oppression on a large scale.
6 Curriculum

With little money, we started the first event of several international encounters in
Tifariti, a small settlement in the remote strip of land between the Western Sahara Occu-
pied Territories and the refugee camps known as the Liberated Territories, which is
controlled by the Sahrawi people. This place of resistance, emblematic for its proxim-
ity to the Moroccan Wall, gave its first name to the encounters: ARTifariti. The annual
events in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 took place there, but since 2011 the encounters
have been developed in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria, to enable more people to
benefit from the project. Since its conception, the project has been discussed, planned,
and approved by the local population (through the Ministry of Culture of the Sahrawi
government) jointly with the artists. It was not meant to be a simple charity-based ven-
ture for the local population, nor another kind of Western colonization, but rather a
collaborative, egalitarian, and well-thought-out project with the aim of working toward
social justice and human rights.

Phase One of the Encounters: An Annual Gathering in the Sahara Desert

The encounters have two distinct phases. In the first phase, every year around October or
November, the public encounter occurs in the Sahara Desert. Around 70 artists, educa-
tors, and other people interested in social justice come together from all over the world
during two intensive weeks with the objective of being fully immersed in the Sahrawi
reality and working on artistic projects for social change (see Figure 1). This is a time for
sharing, connecting, questioning, understanding, and opening people’s eyes to reality.
In small groups, the artists, educators, and organizers and the rest of the participants
are hosted in local homes with Sahrawi families for their entire stay. We spend time

Figure 1 Presenting the different projects, 2008. Source: Courtesy of Pepe Caparrós.
 Social Justice in Art Education: An Example from Africa’s Last Colony 7

together sharing meals and participating in everyday life, learning what it means to be
a refugee living in those extreme conditions. Apart from their local Arabic dialect, Has-
saniyya, most Sahrawis speak some Spanish and French, and some English too. Sahrawi
people are very hospitable and generous despite their difficult reality. Foreigners leave
as friends and with a feeling that they have received much more than they gave.
The two weeks are filled with many events, including numerous visits around the
camps to understand the living conditions and the conflict; destinations include schools,
hospitals, and local organizations, such as the National Union of Sahrawi Women and
the Association of the Families of Sahrawi Prisoners and Disappeared. Participants work
on their art projects for most of the day; they also give or attend workshops and lec-
tures, and take part in thematic concerts and performances at night. There is also a trip
to visit the so-called Moroccan Wall of Shame during the stay in order to see its size, the
landmine field, and the implications of the wall in the division of the Sahrawi population.

Phase Two of the Encounters: Spreading the Message throughout the Year
In the second phase, following this experience of living in the desert camps and working
collaboratively with refugees and people from different countries, international partici-
pants share their insights with the outside world once they have returned to their home
countries. In many and varied ways we expose this forgotten conflict through art projects
in the mass media (e.g., through newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, or the internet), art
fairs and exhibitions, conferences, universities, museums, international organizations,
publications, and more in order to create greater social awareness and social pressure.
Between 2014 and 2017, as an example, artists involved came from Algeria, Argentina,
Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Maurita-
nia, Mexico, Mozambique, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Por-
tugal, Spain, Switzerland, Tunisia, the UK, the USA, and Western Sahara. In November
2017, the 11th edition of ARTifariti was celebrated. During this first decade, more than
350 artistic projects have been developed in collaboration between Sahrawi artists and
those coming from over 50 countries, using media such as painting, sculpture, instal-
lation, land art, performance, happening, dance, mural-making, graffiti, graphic novels,
drawing, photography, video, film, poetry, mail art, textile art, and fashion design.
ARTifariti has a very clear nonprofit philosophy and a modest budget built on dona-
tions and grants by nongovernmental organizations, universities, small businesses, and
occasionally Spanish development agencies. In the first years, the budget was able to
pay for the flights of some renowned artists and give grants for projects to be developed
on site by emerging artists. However, since the financial situation in Spain has deterio-
rated, every international participant is now asked to find their own funding. Any artist,
educator, or interested person can participate in the annual encounters in various ways,
provided their proposal or letter of intention is accepted.

Example of a Project: Synthesis: Past-Present-Future (Grupo Metasintesis)

One of the many projects that were created during the first ARTifariti in 2007 was a
large-scale painting collaboratively created by eight Sahrawi refugees and three inter-
national visitors who are members of Grupo Metasintesis (Metasynthesis Group), one
of whom was Fernando Perez-Martin, one of the authors of this chapter. This artistic
8 Curriculum

group was born in 1991 at the University of Alicante in Spain with the aim of using art
against war (the Gulf War at the time) and continues to work on a variety of art projects
for social justice.
For the large-scale painting, the group was very diverse, with a wide variety of back-
grounds: musicians, housekeepers, a librarian, an economist, a student, a teacher, an
artisan, and an entrepreneur. Only two people in the team had a formal background in
visual arts, but this was of no concern. The intention was to work together as a team,
learn from each other, and create a work of art that served as a metaphorical narration
of the history of Western Sahara. In order to facilitate the telling of history in visual lan-
guage, we chose a common material to us all: old shoes. We believe that old, worn-out
shoes tell the story of the person who wore them, bringing them to life through the
material (Metasintesis 2007; see Figure 2).
To develop this project, we worked long days, from early in the morning to late at
night, as we had limited time. We worked together, ate together, drank tea together, and
enjoyed each other’s company throughout the process. Not everything was easy; we were
working in Tifariti, a remote area with very basic living conditions where we only had an
inconsistent source of electricity by a diesel generator, which we needed in order to work
with some power tools. We also had to share those few tools among all the participants
of the encounters and therefore had to manage the logistics of the various projects as
best we could. Working in a big team was not always easy in terms of coordinating jobs
and making choices, but the project was successfully completed through discussion and
consensus-building.

Figure 2 Working together, 2007. Source: Courtesy of Teodora M. Lázaro.

 Social Justice in Art Education: An Example from Africa’s Last Colony 9

Figure 3 Synthesis: Past-Present-Future (3 × 9 × 1 m). Grupo Metasintesis, 2007. Source: Courtesy of

Fernando Perez-Martin.

The final work, entitled Synthesis: Past-Present-Future (see Figure 3), is a paint-
ing/installation of 3 × 9 × 1 meters in size that narrates the story of a transformation
in a progressive movement from war/death, represented by real landmines, pieces of
bombs, helmets, gas masks, and military boots, to peace/life, represented by musical
instruments and children’s shoes. The painting signifies:

In the path of life, we leave behind heavy experiences and from the present we
dream and create a future in liberty. It is the way back home of the Sahrawi people.

And the sentence decided upon by the team to be written in the painting is:

The important thing is not so much to walk the path of art, but to put it to the
service of peace and friendship.

Reflecting on the International Art and Human Rights Meeting in Western

Sahara
Since their humble beginnings, the encounters have expanded significantly. All of the
artistic social projects developed locally during the annual gathering, and the continued
work done internationally through the media, art fairs, educational settings, and social
and cultural forums, have taught many people about the situation of the Sahrawi people,
their struggles, and their hopes.
On a global scale the encounters have started to become a landmark in the art world. In
past years, this work has been presented in established art spaces such as the Documenta
(13) in Kassel and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The project has also been
10 Curriculum

presented in many other events in Algeria, Argentina, Belgium, Canada, China, Colom-
bia, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Senegal, Spain, Tunisia,
Turkey, the UK, the USA, and other countries. As Edi Escobar, one of the directors and
initiators of the project, explains:

The festival has branched out and today it is a tree from which multiple projects
have stemmed, some as a stump of the main trunk, others as new independent
trees. Its roots are the different aspects of the conflict, which at the same time
generate new projects. (Escobar 2014: 337)

On a local scale, the encounters have created a space for people from different cul-
tures and backgrounds to come together with refugees, learn from each other, and gain
a deeper understanding of the Sahrawis’ reality. During the past decade, the local popu-
lation has also benefited from free art and design workshops, which have promoted new
skill development and led to several income-generating projects. These workshops have
focused on, for example, silk screening, photo journalism, painting, drawing, animation,
ceramics, metal sculpture, social networks, radio production, video creation, projected
art, and various artistic activities with children.
In 2013, La Escuela Saharaui de Artes (The Sahrawi Art School) opened its doors in the
refugee camps with a three-year art diploma program at college level and a curriculum
with subjects such as drawing, painting, sculpture, and history of art. The main objec-
tives of the school are to provide opportunities for youth, to continue working toward
human rights through art and education, and to preserve the Sahrawi cultural heritage.
The teachers are mostly refugees, but there are also some international visiting teachers
who deliver workshops and seminars. A goal for the near future is to improve art edu-
cation in the primary schools through a program of teacher education that will enable
every child to have enriching art classes.
We do not yet know when this forgotten conflict will finally come to an end, but, by
working together through artistic projects, more and more people will open their eyes
to this reality, and perhaps help to achieve refugee artist Mohamed Moulud’s dream:

My great dream is to see my people back home. Going back to El Aaiún, Smara,
Dahla, Bishdur, Auserd … and be just like anybody else, enjoy complete freedom,
to be at your place. This is my dream, to see my people free. (Guzmán 2009)

Conclusion
The potential of the visual arts to promote social justice and transform the lives of indi-
viduals is greater than most people contemplate. The project narrated here is just one
of the many powerful ways people have united to positively influence the world through
the arts. It illustrates just a few of the ways the visual arts can function as forums for
teaching and learning, to inform and convince, and promote the social good.
Contemporary art and design educators teach students about the freedoms and
responsibilities that come with the creation, viewing, and use of the visual arts.
Although structures and policies of curricula are important, it is the meanings we
imbue in curricula that will change the world. National and state standards are less
 Social Justice in Art Education: An Example from Africa’s Last Colony 11

critical to education than rich experiences which resonate deeply within individuals
and within local and global communities. Likewise, the perfection of technical art
and design skills in education is less important than helping learners of all ages to
understand and use the power of the visual arts to express themselves, communicate
righteous ideas, initiate multimodal dialogues, and take social action.

SEE ALSO: Art and Design Education in Botswana: Evolution and Developmental
Trends; Art and Design Education in the Middle East and North Africa: A Brief
Historical Overview; Interfacing Contemporary Art and Art Education in Sub-Saharan
Africa; African Art and Design Curriculum; Visual Culture and Visual Literacy; Black
Image and Identity in the US Curriculum

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Fernando Perez-Martin is an art educator, artist, and researcher teaching at the Fac-
ulty of Education at the University of Granada, Spain. His research and practice focus
on art for social justice as well as art education and creativity in teacher training and
in intercultural community settings. Dr. Perez-Martin has worked on a wide variety
of social, educational, and artistic projects and delivered workshops and presentations
in over a dozen countries in North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. (Dr.
Perez-Martin is also known as Fernando Pérez Martín.)
Kerry Freedman is professor of art and design education at Northern Illinois University,
USA. Her research focuses on questions concerning the relationship of curriculum to
art, culture, and technology. Professor Freedman has published five books and over 100
articles and book chapters translated into multiple languages. She has given over 200
national and international presentations and has been a visiting professor and Fulbright
Scholar at several universities. Professor Freedman has provided significant leadership
at the national and international levels and won numerous grants and awards, including
the National Art Education Association Manuel Barkan Memorial Award for outstand-
ing publication, the Australian Leon Jackman Award for distinguished research in art
education, and, in 2018, the Viktor Lowenfeld Award.