Decolonial AestheSis

The field of art and aesthetics is a way of knowing the world that perpetuates a western colonial understanding through ideas of representation, beauty, perception, sense, and aesthetic experience. Institutions (such as museums, galleries, and schools) continually create and recreate the canon in art and aesthetics, which is absorbed and perpetuated by all people, including those who are historically marginalized. Argentinian scholar Walter Mignolo and American musician Roland Vasquez challenge coloniality in art by distinguishing "aestheSis" from "aestheTics". Aesthetics is a conceptual and intellectual concept employed to regulate taste. Aesthesis, however, is "a sensation of touch" that embodies "esthesis, sensation, sense datum, sense experience, sense impression, perception." The former has been historically employed as a means for European elites to colonize artistic experience throughout the world. The latter, by emphasizing sense experience, is a way to acknowledge and honor alternative forms of art and aesthetics, like those produced by Indigenous and marginalized people. Valorizing aestheSis also opens up new ways to imagine how we all might imagine new worlds.