Border crossings: Student drawings as strategic thinking for metacritical and embodied learning

Abstract

In this article I examine a select group of drawing exercises presented in the early part of the first-year drawing programme in the Department of Visual Art, University of Johannesburg (UJ), South Africa. As many of our first-year students have little formal drawing experience before entering the programme, these drawing exercises confront received conventions of drawing that run counter to more productive strategies of metacritical thinking about how one draws. I explore how the drawing exercises under discussion embrace haptic knowledge, thinking, and doubt, through developing cognitive and kinaesthetic awareness. Such awareness facilitates embodied experiences of looking, drawing, and thinking that counter rote and uncritical picture-making.