Higher Un-Learning: Toward a New Holistic History is a suite of two-sided drawings I made in 1999 to re-contexualize imagery from disparate time periods and cultures and invite non-linear, non-hierarchical ways of thinking about how we trace history and compile collective knowledge.

On a 1932 portfolio illustrating the Rhode Island School of Design Museum’s Greek vase collection, I superimposed linear drawings of 19th and 20th Century tribal masterworks from Africa and Oceania. There was an intended irony in the choice of imagery: for too long tribal culture from Africa had been categorized as “primitive,” so combining it with what history considers to be classical “high art” raised questions about the value judgements the West has institutionalized. I had spent valuable hours with the African art collection of art dealer Allan Stone and came to appreciate these works of art as some of the most sophisticated ever made.

This series also became a way to employ intuitive mark making and context to investigate what makes these works so charged. Working on this found printed material, results in incongruities between the surfaces’ original meanings and the imagery I apply, revealing unexpected connections and connotations. The impact of age and use on the folio pages imbue the drawing support with a subtle energy and resonance.

At the heart of my work is a fundamental question: what do I know? It invites examination not only of the content of one’s knowledge but the basis of that knowledge and, more to the point, what it means to know what we think we know. With a dogmatic habit, we tend to accept so much of the information we assimilate as true, only to face disenchantment and the need for “unlearning” when—and if—we acknowledge how little we have found out for ourselves. Higher Un-Learning: Toward a New Holistic History is a way to entangle and interrogate these issues.

BO JOSEPH

BO JOSEPH