Judith Kusi: Artist and Educational Psychologist
Highams Park School is honoured to have been selected to feature pieces of beautiful artwork by Judith Kusi. Judith has kindly allowed us to exhibit her work within our Black History Month Exhibition on Friday 22 October 2021.
Judith Kusi is a Conceptual Artist and Practitioner Educational and Child Psychologist. She grew up in East London and completed her Doctorate in Educational and Child Psychology at UEL in 2017.
See website for artist bio and statement
Judith's Coloured People Artworks currently has three compositions:
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1. Ink and Charcoal · Visually depicts ideas from Cognitive Behavioural Theory to how we perceive and process race · Artist uses different colours in ink to guide the viewer to make sense of whole human figures in charcoal. This is done to highlight how we make sense of a ‘whole person’ using stereotypes attached to colour. This, from the artists view is an automatic thinking process. · E.g. focus on an individual colour (e.g. red) to see if you are better able to see a figure. · Work was completed to give pause to how we order the importance of visual features in our encounters with others. E.g. How do we describe others or think of others? Would you use gender, races, what a person is wearing etc? what effect does this have on the importance of these features in how we make sense of others? |
How do you see me? (2018) |
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2. Spaces between (see website for original artwork) These oil paintings focus on negative spaces between overlapping human figures. The work draws the viewers attention to these spaces attempting to reframe our understanding of the location of race. Here, race is not an internal, static concept but a socially constructed idea. The focus on the spaces between highlights how we shape our understanding of the concept of race through mutual agreement. Social constructionism suggests that this is shaped by language and interaction. The artists goal here is to highlight the power we have in shaping social understanding of the idea of race and therefore making a difference in the way that groups of people are related to and experience the world based on this arbitrary characteristic. |
Study - Fiction in the Space Between (2019) |
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3. Shadow drawings These pastel drawings are some of the newer works completed during lockdown. They are explorative, focusing on the artists own narrative about themselves in the world. The works are framed well within the ideas of Intersectionality. The process of creating the work gave the artist space and time to reflect on the overlapping categorisations of her own identity. Judith reflected on aspects of her own identity that provide her with experiences of privilege and oppression. |
Finding Yourself (2020) |
