These Lessons

In the text on pedagogy and psychology, Frames of Mind, Howard Gardner outlines a theory of multiple intelligences that gestures at a broader and more multifaceted approach to learning and teaching. Gardner outlines eight pedagogical categories, in which we are all skilled at varying levels: linguistic, logical mathematical, visual/spatial, musical, naturalist, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. The artists in These Lessons use visual and spatial learning methods to understand the residues of colonial histories and expand the western cultural vocabulary to include the traditions of their homelands and ancestors. The visual and the spatial offer an alternative to the codified and inequitable linguistic and logical mathematical approaches that most educational structures are built on. Through abstraction, architecture, and color theory, these artists are learning and unlearning lessons from their families, home countries, adopted countries, and formal education.

Brooke Burnside is currently living and working in Austin, Texas while she is earning her master’s degree in the Architecture Department at the University of Texas. She was born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas.

Diego Mireles Duran is a multidisciplinary artist from Northern Mexico raised in South Texas and currently based out of Austin, Texas.

Carlos Rosales-Silva was born and raised in El Paso, Texas on the border of the United States and Mexico. He is currently living and working in New York while earning his master’s degree at the School of Visual Arts.

MASS is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Economic Growth & Redevelopment Services Office/Cultural Arts Division believing an investment in the Arts is an investment in Austin’s future.