Getting Out Of The Hole

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Getting out of the hole: Quarantine Room 1716

My research draws upon my experience of quarantine during the Covid-19 pandemic as a metaphor for the restrictions faced by high school students and teachers of art in China. On return to China due to the Coronavirus pandemic, I was sent directly to a hotel near the airport for a compulsive 14-day quarantine. On 21st April at 7:34 am I walked into room 1716, I was not allowed to leave, order food and had only limited personal luggage with me. The lost of possibility in creation made me feel difficult to breathe, but gradually, I got used to it. During these days, when the curtain was closed, I could not tell whether it was day or night. It seems that I fell into a cave and couldn't see the outside “real world”. Everything around me remained unchanged，except for the anonymous men/women I could observed form the peephole. In addition, the meals provided were also repetitive. At 8 am, 12 pm and 6 pm every day, I would receive pre-prepared food neatly arranged in boxes with a drink and fruit. I gradually look forward to it.

The school art classroom under the Chinese education system is basically textbook and skills-focused. Textbooks provide pictures of demonstrations and well-summarized knowledge of art history, decided by the experts of art education believe students should learn. For art appreciation classes, students obediently learn the names and facts from the textbooks and not knowing whether it has anything to do with "real art" or with themselves. Practical aspects of art education are skills-focused; teachers demonstrate certain procedures, step by step. The better a student follows the actions and imitates the teacher's work, the higher their rewards will be. This way of teaching cultivates the production of artworks like objects in the factory, with everyone making the same thing and limits students' understanding of what is art, as well as preventing space for exploration. It naturally becomes a hierarchical, closed educational environment governed by experts or teachers who exert authority and control over what is taught and how. Everyone in the system is used to it and feels comfortable.

Undertaking practice-based research in Quarantine Room 1716 has forced me to reconsider my practices as an art teacher in a secondary school in China and to recognize the need for a greater role of teacher and student autonomy.

By Yinshi Huang
Artist and secondary school art teacher

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