Etnodesign, afrocentricidade e ensino de artes: reflexões a partir dos Adinkra da cultura Akan de Gana

Abstract

Faced with a globalized, technological current situation in which the ease of access to images and information is a fact, this work proposes to launch a critical look at the appropriation of images, intangible assets of ethnic groups by design, aiming specifically at design of fashion. From the focus on the ethnicity of the Akan of Ghana, the Adinkra become the core of this study whose objective is the structuring of a pedagogical and artistic practice that manages sensitization, awareness and incitement to otherness in the student-designer graduating from technology in design of fashion. The intention is for this study to be the starting point of a practice that promotes the maintenance of an ethical agency of images within design training, putting in check ethnodesign itself, an antagonistic category to this ethics. The methodology used was the bibliography looking for the approximation of the African ethos via native authors as references and observation point of the African worldview. The proposal drew on the concepts of experience and Afrocentricity as basic elements of the workshop whose collaborative nature provides an effective practice on the subjectivities that enable more ethics regarding the use of images as belonging to the “other”. The results point to the importance of the angle of analysis starting from the source of origin of the image and/or originary culture, the importance of what Larrosa calls “gesture of interruption” as a form of immersion in the culture of the “other”, and attention to the meaning, essence or function that the image may have for the culture of its group, community or people.