How can we enable visual arts education to reflect contemporary art practices? The art form of performance has a significant role in today’s art scene and is exhibited in galleries, biennials, and museums. However, it can feel challenging to approach for both students and art teachers. Working in three dimensions and with sculptures involves physical contact with the materials, but the body itself can also become the material.

In their thesis project at Konstfack, performance artist and art education student Naelu, in collaboration with the Princess Estelle’s Cultural Foundation and the Museum of Ethnography, has explored the use of masks as tools for performance art in visual arts education.

Naelu has employed Research Creation, a method of research through creative practice, where various research events such as workshops and interviews with high school art students have shaped the work.

The video performance piece Alternative Identity portrays experiences and insights that have emerged through artistic exploration of the Royal Djurgården Sculpture Park and the Museum of Ethnography, using alternative identity as a starting point. Workshops and interviews with high school students have been a significant part of the empirical study, where students were initially tasked with designing and creating alternative identities in the form of masks using recycled materials in the Museum of Ethnography’s studio. Subsequently, they participated in performance exercises in the Royal Djurgården Sculpture Park.

By providing students with the challenges posed by different art expressions and materials, where considerations of identity, spatiality, and corporeality are given space, a broader form of knowledge acquisition can be achieved, blurring the boundaries of what one dares to express or not.

Collaboration between schools and art and cultural institutions is a way to integrate practical knowledge acquisition in visual arts education with contemporary art. Allowing students to create in public spaces while being protected by the alternative identities provided by the masks enables greater inclusivity while also reaching out to the broader community with their creations.