Art Practices that F*** Normality & Bridges the Gap to Responsive Collaboratives

The complexities of life have altered learning and are challenging the restructuring of traditional systems, forcing practitioners to reconfigure educational evolutions. How do the arts serve as a non-extractive resource (in-process and contribution) to reconfigure a liberatory praxis in and beyond formal educational spaces? Utilizing transdisciplinarity with varied indigenous restorative identity practices, our research centers around collaborative art communities that use art therapy, meditative techniques (e.g., yoga), and elements of Hip-Hop Based Education to address social problems. With the increase of diagnosed mental and psychological issues, artistic research as a modality practice engages artivists (Sandoval & Latorre 2008) and forward-thought thinkers to respond with STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Math) paradigms and the Art of C-A-R-E creative module. As expansive concepts to art therapy, this regenerative art challenges individuals in self-awareness, communication, emotional change, and personal growth (Malchiodi, 2007). Utilizing these forms of understanding supports the metaphysical experience of creativity and its creative expression, coupling it with holistic ancestral identities enables the transcension of traditional boundaries to develop the innate genius. Additionally, these practices engage the scope of “who” has access to decision-making and creatively expand an idea from the realm of possibilities to change the human experience. Through facilitated exercises that center individuals’ authentic identities — exploration of sound and movement, training on the feeling of space, and instinctive interaction with the body — we impose radical learning and develop the collective artistic consciousness through the works of an “emotive artist” to disrupt capitalist-coloniality binaries.