Critical Generosity as a Decolonial Praxis

A view on EXÓTICA, by Amanda Piña / Studio Fortuna

Art criticism is a stronghold of Western aesthetic and philosophical traditions. Coming from the Greek kritikos (i.e. to be able to make judgments, to discern), critics have been applying theoretical thinking to art for centuries. Whilst criticism can be a powerful writing tool for interpreting and making art more accessible to the public, this discipline has also historically been shaped by intellectual men with undeniable elitist and masculinist perspectives. For instance, with his reviews of the 18th-century Salons, French philosopher Denis Diderot has been considered one of its progenitors – proposing moral judgment as an element of taste.^[1]Seznec, J. (ed.) (2011) On Art and Artists: An Anthology of Diderot’s Aesthetic Thought. Translated by John S.D. Glaus. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London and New York: Springer, pp. 1-2.

“With the development of modernity’s idea of the superiority of reason over emotion and passion, art critics have been advancing a perspective of ‘objectivity’ over ‘subjectivity.”

With the development of modernity’s idea of the superiority of reason over emotion and passion, art critics have been advancing a perspective of ‘objectivity’ over ‘subjectivity’: in most cases, such writing discipline would follow the evaluation of specific aesthetic categories, such as ‘matter’, ‘form’ and ‘content’.^[2]Greene, T. (1947) The Arts and the Art of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 4-5, 31-32. Since the 1970s, feminist art critics have been denouncing such an analytical approach, proposing intimacy over a supposed ‘intellectual neutrality’ or objectivity that only served to construct and perpetuate patriarchal art history.^[3]Frueh, J. (2018 [1988]) Towards A Feminist Theory of Art Criticism, in Raven, Langer and Frueh (eds.) Feminist Art Criticism: An Anthology. New York and Oxon: Routledge, pp. 153-165 [153-154]. Although the dialogue in feminist criticism has overwhelmingly been US-centred and in the English language, writers like Susan Sontag, Lucy Lippard, Rosalind Krauss, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Coco Fusco and Rosa Martinez have been invaluable for ‘changing the agenda for social and political concerns in art criticism’, analysing new topics and methods for addressing issues of class, race, ethnicity and sexuality.^[4]Deepwell, K. (2020) Art Criticism and the State of Feminist Art Criticism, Arts, 9(28), pp. 1-19 [1, 4-5, 15]. Concurrently, queer approaches to art criticism started exploring how culture might be accessed via ‘non-normative modes of cultural conduct’, which have often been dismissed as ‘abnormal, un-serious, lazy, ineffectual’.^[5]Butt, G. (2005) The Paradoxes of Criticism, in Butt, G. (ed.) After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance. Malden, Oxford and Carlton: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 1-19 [14]. 

Almost two decades ago, in his edited book After Criticism, British art historian Gavin Butt noticed that critical distance (one of critical culture’s key features) had become ‘increasingly prone to collapse’ as critics ’abandoned their claims to speak from any form of privileged or “authoritative” viewpoint’.^[6]Ibid. p. 3. The theorist – he argues – ‘rather than being remote from that which he or she surveys, is […] enmeshed in the very, perhaps even “creative,” production of the cultural fabric itself’^[7]Ibid.. With such proximity, what could the productive consequences be for art criticism? 

The answer, I believe, is to be found in the concept of ‘critical generosity’ – a term that theatre scholar David Román elaborated at the end of the 1990s to describe how, during the AIDS crisis in New York, criticism had to account for the effects of queer productions on their audiences and communities at large.^[8]Román, D. (1988) Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Over a decade later, feminist scholar Jill Dolan expanded upon the concept by speaking of how critical generosity can stand as an alternative to the deleterious or vitriolic criticism that has become synonymous with criticism itself: Dolan suggested giving space for the counterintuitive ‘generosity’ (without it being ‘blandly cheerleading’) as a mode of productive critical engagement.^[9]Dolan, J. (2013) Critical Generosity, Public: A Journal of Imagining America, 1(1–2). Available at: https://public.imaginingamerica.org/blog/article/critical-generosity-2/. Critical generosity, then, can become an essential tool ‘to balance advocacy with engagement’, to support and create dialogues with the practice of artists who have social justice at the core of their world-building projects.^[10]Ibid. In applying this concept in the theatre classroom, Leah Lowe also emphasised how critical generosity would implicate a willingness to be altered by, and be receptive to, the performance and vision of the world it brings forth.^[11]Lowe, L. (2007) Toward “Critical Generosity”: Developing Student Audiences. Theatre Topics, 17(2), pp. 141-151 [141]. In doing so, the audience also need to be aware of the position they speak from and their own ‘spectatorial conventions and critical biases’, which might emerge when evaluating the performance.^[12]Ibid. 

Whilst the literature I have just surveyed has been developed by queer and feminist writers, with the forthcoming example I would like to make a case for how critical generosity should also be understood as a decolonial tool in art criticism and beyond.

In the past few years, I got to know Austrian-based Chilean/Mexican artist Amanda Piña, as well as her world vision and activism that are grounded in collaborative, transnational, decolonial praxes. Operating under the collective name ‘Studio Fortuna’ (formerly known as nadaproductions) and in dialogue with various (human and nonhuman) co-creators, Amanda’s practice has strived to challenge colonialism and the extractive capitalism of corporations (like the multinational mining company Anglo American) that are causing irreparable damage to the biodiversity, the groundwater and the communities that inhabit their lands. In her co-creations, the artist, who first trained in painting and later in dance, has been incorporating the knowledge of experts from different fields (e.g. journalists, academics, scientists, indigenous people) to contextualise and give depth to the works that she’s been presenting institutionally.^[13]See, for example, Amanda Piña’s multi-layered project Escuela De Las Montañas y Las Aguas [School of Mountains and Waters]. Available at: … Continue reading Her commitment towards indigenous worldviews and spiritual knowledges is practised on and off the stage – perhaps most visibly through the collaboration with Wixárika indigenous leader and healer Mara’akame Katira.^[14]Collaborations with Mara’akame Katira include: School of the Jaguar and School of Mountains & Water. See Amanda Piña’s projects page at: https://nadaproductions.at/projects. As an artist, she involves ritual methodologies that are directly inspired by the spiritual life she has nurtured since a young age while growing up in Latin America. I have seen Amanda’s work reaching well beyond the educated European theatre public, making bridges across continents, age groups, gender identities and racial backgrounds.^[15]See, for example, her open-air performance Frontera/Procesión – Un ritual del Agua [Border/Procession – A ritual of Water], that involved the participation of diverse groups of vulnerable and … Continue reading Her border-crossing alliance-building approach and her alliances with local communities and practitioners is at the core of her ethos and working practice: since early on, in her performance productions, Amanda has involved dancers of various ethnic backgrounds who might reside in different parts of the world, and has been traveling across the continents for research and development. Such are not easy choices, especially if thinking of the extra work, emotional labour and costs that transnational engagements might implicate for an independent artist and production company (e.g. dealing with visas, travel restrictions, further logistics and negotiations among all the artists involved).

Therefore, when critically evaluating Amanda Piña/Studio Fortuna’s work, I am aware of these important aspects. Having background knowledge of an artist’s practice is fundamental for approaching their work – especially if they share the same anti-colonial, alliance-building, transfeminist ethos as you do. Just like the previously cited Jill Dolan, I have also decided to spend my time and energy to write about pieces that I like, for artists from diverse geopolitical contexts I form relationships with, and who resist the recirculation of colonial energies whilst maintaining the associations between queer, trans and feminist ideas and practices. The latter, in fact, I believe get less traction from mainstream audiences and critics possibly because of their more or less overt critique of cisheteronormativity and structural whiteness – leaving their audiences challenged, and at times with no or little ‘feel good’ vibes by the end of the show. I do acknowledge, then, that when I wrote my response to Amanda Piña/Studio Fortuna’s work Exótica, which premiered in June 2023 at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, I was not objective.^[16]Casalini, G. (2023) Dancing with the Ancestors: Exótica by Amanda Piña/Nadaproductions. Dance Art Journal, 21 August. Available at: … Continue reading I never was, and I will never claim to be. Objectivity is a patriarchal construct that has historically masked racist, patriarchal, misogynist biases, and has consequentially relegated some figures and aesthetic practices to the shadows of mainstream discourses and art history.

Such is also the message of Exótica, a work that – as its subtitle says – brings to the same exoticising stages ‘the brown history of European dance’.^[17]For description, trailers and production information about the work, see: EXOTICA – On the brown history of European dance. Available at: https://nadaproductions.at/performance/exotica. Exótica might not be an easy work to digest for a ‘white’ audience member like myself, who has been socialised within a Western knowledge system, under the ideological frameworks of modernity: the performance has confronted me with the seat of privilege I and my predecessors have occupied (both literally and metaphorically), showing how such position (of whiteness as a system of oppression) has also framed the racialised dancers that the piece is summoning. In me, this piece has given rise to contradictory feelings of appreciation (for the staged dances) and rejection (as I was rejecting my own gaze for fear of perpetuating the violence of exoticism) through distancing and dissociation. However, as a queer Southern European migrant audience member who is critically aware of how colonialism keeps on operating in our societies and institutions, I was also empowered by the disruptive ritualistic exercise and ancestral incantations of the piece, enacted by the dancers’ gender diverse bodies and sensual expressions.

 

 

 

Exótica wants to make us acquainted with some of dance history’s ghosts: Clemencia Piña ‘La Sarabia’ (who is also Amanda Piña’s biological ancestor), Nyota Inyoka, François ’Féral’ Benga and Leila Bederkhan. Despite their contribution to the dance scene at the beginning of the 20^th century, the traces of these ‘exotic’ dancers have, for a long time, been lost to history: Amanda Piña and other dance scholars – in particular Nicole Haitzinger, who also acted as the show’s dramaturg – have aimed to unearth through archival research these dancers’ work. Such resurfacing took place both theoretically and in the flesh of the artists performing the piece, who thoroughly performed and reinterpreted their choreographies.^[18]The performers of the first iteration of the piece, who also conducted the choreographic research, were: Ángela Muñoz Martínez, André Bared Kabangu Bakambay, Venuri Perera, iSaAc Espinoza Hidrobo … Continue reading The research and development of this work has therefore not only consisted in academic investigation, but also in somatically exploring the connections and emotional ties between the contemporary dancers and those that the piece has aimed to channel. For instance, this work has been transformative for Amanda Piña herself as it reawakened her ties with the paternal great-aunt, who left Mexico to study dance in Paris at the end of the 19^th century. Nicole Haitzinger, then, whilst explaining her research in historical dance archives, confessed that Nyota Inyoka, François Benga and Leila Bederkhan ‘found us, whispering, initiating an act of remembering dancers of colour’.^[19]Personal communication with Nicole Haitzinger (14 May 2024). See also: Sandra Chatterjee, Franz Anton Cramer, and Nicole Haitzinger (2022) Remembering Nyota Inyoka: Queering Narratives of Dance, … Continue reading As a member of the public, I equally had a profound experience when Amanda invited us to invoke an ancestor to experience the show with: since that moment, I felt a still lasting connection with my paternal grandmother, whom I never met.

For these and more reasons, I found myself quite surprised by the comments of some reviewers of the show – two of which were published previously in this same magazine. Undeservedly, one critic noted that ‘the painfully drawn-out pace of action barely budges’ and later wondered, even more harshly, ‘if the four artists were turning in their graves’.^[20]Duckworth, O. (2023) EXÓTICA – AMANDA PIÑA: Ritualistic admonishment. pzazz, 6 June. Available at: https://www.pzazz.theater/nl/recensies/toneel/exotica. Another critic stated that ‘the clinical distance between the dancers and the dance was hard to ignore’ and later argued that a famous Los Angeles dance studio shares a more effective message for coming to terms ‘with the inexhaustible and democratizing impulse to show and watch outlandish bodies’.^[21]Akıncı, E. F. (2023) EXÓTICA – Amanda Piña. Etcetera, 6 June. Available at: https://e-tcetera.be/exotica-amanda-pina. Whereas the accusation of ‘clinical distance’ gives no justice to the embodied process of ancestral entanglement the dancers went through during the development of the piece (as explained by Amanda Piña during the post-show Q&A), the forced comparison with a mainstream American dance studio not only fails to catch the crucially anti-colonial message of the show, but also dismisses the structurally different ways and contexts in which Amanda Piña/Studio Fortuna operate.^[22]Amanda Piña was publicly interviewed after the show by Dries Douibi on 2 June 2023. Another critic’s review, although very articulate, seems to have used their review of the show as a pretext to talk about their own ritualistic performance practice – which made me wonder why to even mention Exótica altogether, since the critic’s interpretative frameworks also belong to a discrete Afrocentric context and belief system.^[23]Maroga, K. (2023) Etcetera, 6 June. Available at: https://e-tcetera.be/god-is-alive-magic-is-afoot/.

“It is discomforting to see that, even nowadays, criticism has to cling on to the idea of being antagonistic in order to be effective.”

Amanda Piña is not the only artist who has received such ungenerous criticism: in recent times, other queer/transfeminist artists I have met complained about critics misinterpreting their work and message. It is discomforting to see that, even nowadays, criticism has to cling on to the idea of being antagonistic in order to be effective. One of the main problems, I have noticed, it is the critics’ unwillingness to take on the perspectives of the artists’ unique world visions without imposing pre-established agendas or cutting any constructive dialogue short. In particular, art critics or theorists who have been trained within structurally white or Western systems of knowledge should try to understand the worldviews and aesthetic practices of artists from different geopolitical contexts – even when these differ from those they are used to.^[24]It is important to note that, even racialised writers might come with their own assumptions or might have been trained in a ‘Western’ environment or in one that has colonially imposed such values … Continue reading Such systems of knowledge are more explicit in majority white countries, especially the European and Anglo-American ones. With settler colonialism and neo-colonialism, however, such systems of knowledge have been travelling across the oceans, penetrating the structures and institutions also of non-Western countries, which might have then assimilated and adopted Western values (e.g. in the arts, law or education). Critics who have received such training (and especially if based in the ‘West’) should then be mindful of reproducing one predominant world of sensing and meaning (i.e. the Modern, colonial one). Rather, they should become enabling agents for the possibilities of many worlds of sensing and meaning to manifest, and for always-diverse art practices to co-exist and enter in dialogue with one other. Artists, especially those from the politicised queer/transfeminist and racialised communities, deserve more than destructive or unsupportive criticism. And writers have nothing to lose – only to gain – by engaging in critical generosity as a praxis. Generosity is at the basis of such criticism that, to me, is also profoundly decolonial.

Whilst considering the way critique has been entangled in the project of Western modernity, Puerto Rican scholar Nelson Maldonado-Torres has importantly asked: ‘Can critique be decolonial? Is critique needed? And, if critique is to be used, doesn’t it need to be decolonized first?’^[25]Maldonado-Torres, N. (2020) What Is Decolonial Critique? Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 41(1), pp. 157-183 [159]. In his response, he mentions Black, brown and Indigenous authors (e.g. Frantz Fanon, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Chela Sandoval, bell hooks, María Lugones, Doug White, Deborah McGregor, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson) who employ love as a tool for decolonial interpretation and connection. Through such work, Maldonaldo-Torres shows how decolonial critique is grounded in ‘decolonial love’, which brings forth ‘encounters among the colonized’ and an ‘openness to other-than-modern worldviews’.^[26]Ibid. [161-162]. Such criticism has to involve ‘humility in the face of unknown ways of thinking and the flexibility to adapt and change in the process of coming together with others in a struggle.’^[27]Ibid. [161]. A pluriversal approach – the understanding that reality is constituted by many worlds, ontologies, ways of being, ways of knowing and experimenting, and that these are all (even partially) interconnected – is fundamental in the application of such criticism.^[28]The concept of the pluriverse has most famously been conceptualised by Argentinian semiotician Walter D. Mignolo and Colombian-born anthropologist Arturo Escobar. Mignolo said he first heard its use … Continue reading

“For criticism to be decolonial, it must first start from a perspective of love – or of generosity as a form of love.”

In conclusion, I am convinced that for criticism to be decolonial, it must first start from a perspective of love – or of generosity as a form of love. Such criticism requires, for instance: spending more time with a work of art; understanding/sensing it differently rather than with the (colonial) tools of ‘reason’; being ready to use other interpretative tools as we recognise a pluriversal approach in encountering the artwork; shifting one’s perspective from critical destruction (of the work and its creators) to construction/co-creation/co-habitation; understanding the work of art and its influence beyond the short span of its stage execution. 

Now more than ever we need such decolonial, generous criticism to nourish and preserve our precarious art sector and the struggles of queer/transfeminist communities worldwide (who have also increasingly been attacked by conservative politics, disguising a deeply colonial raison d’être). Critical generosity as a decolonial praxis has the power to shake the theoretical foundations of modernity through decolonially generous paradigms. This approach will require a practice of ‘digging deeper and relating wider’, spending more time to listen, engage and be open to one another – showing love and kindness as a decolonial form of relating across the socially engaged arts, theory and activism.^[29]I borrow the sentence ‘dig deeper and relate wider’ from the transnational decolonial collective Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures, as stated in their Reciprocity Commitments. Available at: … Continue reading

 

This article appeared in ETCETERA on June 10, 2024, and has been reposted with permission.