Chinese University Art Students Negotiating Minzu Visual Design: An Interculturality Art Perspective.

This paper focuses on Chinese 'ethnic' Minzu art education for university undergraduate students, specializing in various subfields of visual arts. Based on data collected during a course on Minzu visual design, analysed visually and discursively, the paper intersects the notions of Minzu (in reference to the 56 official Minzu groups composing Chinese Mainland) and interculturality (understood here as processes of change when people meet) in art education. In the course, groups of art students cooperate on a visual design project at a top Minzu university in China, whereby they need to negotiate artistic creations based on one Minzu group. The interest is on the artistic and visual aspects of their creations. The results highlight a form of curiosity for the 'other' anthropologically and artistically that does not seem to be satisfied. As such the students appear to be disappointed by the end products, having found what some refer to as merely superficial Minzu design elements and having had to make changes to them to fit the purpose of the course project. However, interculturality as change in art does happen throughout the course, especially when the students mixed some elements from different Minzu groups in their design. Recommendations for global arts education, from an intercultural perspective, are drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]