Painting / Prof. Madya Jalaini Abu Hassan

The new studio class orientation is the result of refining our self-adjusting routine since the beginning of the covidien-era. Studio space disguises itself as a hyperspace screensaver with mug shot profiles of young student-artists. What I have encountered earlier on, mostly during the online studio classroom- is that a lot of students that are taking a painting class think that they are entering a kind of webinar-meeting-session situation. That I find problematic in teaching studio painting because it jeopardizes the conversation about the process that transforms personal ideas into screen-based description. I have to admit; neither the students nor me are familiar with the new procedure of online discussion especially when twenty-five profiles are crisscrossing with each other most of the time. Nonetheless, despite the technical glitches and the self-confining situations, what I found exceptionally astonishing is the fact that every student has their own unique way of adapting to their new surroundings. The small homemade working spaces have been transformed into mini mission control centers with screens, microphones and headphones navigated by the young artists. This is something that I would never have imagined in my long teaching career as an art tutor. The year 2020/21 has undoubtedly been a journey of discovery and adapting to not only the new normal but also the new formal where the language of the visual is reassessed. The young student-artists of today’s generation see the glaring paradox between the proliferation of art productions and the anxiety around what many perceive as a crisis in artist education. From the 2020s on, the influence of new formalism in fine art education and production will affect the very nature of our practice as an artist and educator. This is the most challenging part for us in the time of crisis and isolation, to balance between pedagogical requirements to address what a student-artist is now in this new normality and what the critical criteria and physical requirements are for educating one. This is the most organic matter in the history of fine art education.