Renaissances as a Practice-Based Research in Teaching: Where Arts’ Histories Begin

Author Information

Iriane Leme, São Paulo State University, Brazil
Regilene Sarzi-Ribeiro, São Paulo State University, Brazil

Abstract

“In the Antiroom: Arts’ Histories as a Pluriversal Proposal” is an ongoing doctoral research characterized by its interdisciplinary and indisciplinary nature, engaging the fields of art education, media and technology, history, and the arts. It draws on the researcher’s teaching and research practices, as previously explored in “Arts’ Histories: Simultaneity as a Methodological Approach” (Leme & Sarzi-Ribeiro, 2025). Briefly cited in that study, the teaching experience titled Renaissances — which this paper explores in depth — was conceived as an antiroom practice (derived from the Portuguese antisala), where other artistic and cultural flourishings were “temporally and/or epistemologically related and layered to the movement that had its epicenter in Florence” (Leme & Sarzi-Ribeiro, 2025). In this context, the Harlem, Catalan, Italian, and Mexican Renaissances were placed in dialogue with the bodies of work of Harmonia Rosales (Pinto, 2019) and Beyoncé, along with artistic and cultural productions associated with Kemet, Chimú, Marajoara, Ifé, and many other civilizations, peoples, cultures, and temporalities. Given that the Italian Renaissance, especially through the figure of Giorgio Vasari, marks what can be regarded as the beginning of art history, this pedagogical practice, taught during the researcher’s initial experience in Brazilian higher education and currently being expanded, serves as a weft for pluriversal educational proposals. By playing with its title, it encourages reflections on decoloniality, convergences, and critically intercultural interpretations within the histories, nomenclatures, and concepts of art, making space for other ways of teaching and learning, beyond a single and, therefore, local [art] history (Adichie, 2009; Mignolo, 2020).

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