Education from Below is a two-year collaborative programme organised between the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, MACBA, Barcelona and WHW, Zagreb.
Education from Below explores art as a place for dialogue, collective learning and imagination. Education doesn't belong only in institutions, but it can be horizontal and come from below, from communities.
The project recognises that art practices can dislocate the usual hierarchies of what should or should not be learned and traditional divisions between theory and practice, and that knowledge does not have to be based on accumulation, but rather on sharing and mutual learning.
The partners will explore new models of art practice based on collective learning and will generate a network of institutions and professionals for sharing methodologies.
Education from Below links three independent programmes for artists, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, PEI at MACBA, and WHW Akademija that each provide important opportunities for artistic development outside of formal education systems. The project will be realised over the course of autumn 2019 – autumn 2021 through seminars, study groups, artist residencies, exhibitions, series of lectures, an international conference, a collective reader and a common web platform, involving many artists, thinkers and educators.
Participants of WHW Akademija in collaboration with Banu Cennetoğlu collectively co-created a publication 'citizen conscious' that uses images and texts that in a printed matter format explore the position of the artistic responsibilities within the complex geopolitical conditions of the current moment.
Banu Cennetoğlu lives and works in Istanbul. Cennetoğlu explores the political, social and cultural dimension of the production, representation and distribution of knowledge and asks how it feeds into a society’s collective thought and becomes part of its ideology. Solo exhibitions include: K21 Ständehaus, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2019); Sculpture Center, New York (2019); Chisenhale Gallery, London (2018); Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2015); Salonul de proiecte, Bucharest (2013); Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2011). Selected group exhibitions include: Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead, Bergen Assembly 2019; Beautiful world, where are you?, Liverpool Biennale (2018); documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017); The Restless Earth, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan (2017); 10th Gwangju Biennale (2014); Manifesta 8, Murcia (2010); 53rd Venice Biennale/Pavilion of Turkey (2009); 5th Berlin Biennale (2008); 1st Athens Biennale and 10th Istanbul Biennial (both 2007). In 2006, she initiated BAS, a project space in Istanbul focusing on collection and production of artists’ books and printed matter. In 2016, she was a guest at the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme.