Visual Studies
What is Visual Studies?
Visual Studies is a BA subject provided by the Visual Arts Department at Stellenbosch University. It constitutes the main theoretical module for the undergraduate BAVA degree, but any student admitted to Stellenbosch University can register for it. You do not need to have taken art at school and the course comprises only theoretical work (no practical art classes).
Visual Studies is a relatively new discipline that brings critical theories from a wide array of fields including Art History, Media Studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies and Philosophy to bear on a host of visual objects. The interdisciplinary nature of the programme allows one to analyse objects originating from a variety of contexts such as fine arts, mass media, film, corporate communication, visual communication design, and architecture.
In a world increasingly mediated by the visual, to understand the production, circulation and reading thereof is essential. Visual Studies will help you to interpret the world as a visual domain and equip you to master the complex languages of visual culture that are fundamental to being an active and engaged citizen of the 21st century.
The course
Visual Studies courses tend to adopt an overarching critical focus such as Marxist, post-colonialist or gender theory under which umbrella popular cultural (film, advertising, photography, social media) or so-called high art images may be explored.
The highly popular undergraduate offering poses questions that resonate with student’s experience of their complex life-world:
- How does rapidly changing technology impact human identity?
- How is our embodiment as raced, sexed and gendered persons negotiated by the visual?
- How do inherited cultural and political persuasions encode meaning in visual images?
- How can images subvert dominant western ideologies?
Here is an introduction to the First Year Visual Studies course:
Afro-feminist interviews
Watch these five interviews with African artists about their art, politics and sense of time to get a feel for the concerns artists are currently interested in. The interviews were recorded online as part of the Slow Intimacy Project. You can read about this project on the ‘Projects’ page.
Sitaara Stodel Chemu Ng’ok Thandiwe Gula-Ndebele Nuotama Bodomoa Nomusa Mtshali
For more information
Prof Lize van Robbroeck | Coordinator: Visual Studies