Brown Girl Not in the Ring

Jhinuk Sarkar, Central Saint Martins, UK.

The opportunity that Shades of Noir gave me through the Teaching Within program was not one that I thought was ever open to me: To recognise my own area of expertise. To find value in my own education experiences.

I didn’t know that any person would be interested, would appreciate my work, or find reference in it, let alone other students finding value in it for the sake of direction in their work.

Teaching Within gave me space to reflect on a few important points in my arts education and subsequent practice as an Illustrator and Disability access consultant: My voice as a postgraduate student interrogating my ‘Mother Tongue’ was not nurtured. I had no confidence to explore identity in my illustration work. People around me in ‘authority’ as teachers did not adopt any kind of transformational education principles that I can recall. The power seemed to lie within a definitive single story.

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My experience as a new graduate with a Masters left me with uncertainty, at a time I now realise I should have been ready to thrive. At least I kept on creating work. I know other friends and peers gave up at this point.

Whilst I carried on creating, themes in my work exploring identity kept returning. Even amongst commissions and work in arts organisations outside of my illustration practice. It was only during my PG Cert education where I found a community of peers that I really thought: This means something. Other people feel like this too. I finally began to note my skills, their value and some that lay within my identity.

“The only solutions that are ever worth anything are the solutions that people find themselves.” Satyajit Ray

Themes of belonging and identity will always be there in my work, ideas, illustration practice. Whether they are subconscious or conscious, it’s part of me.

Teaching Within gave me the nurturing I needed the first time round as a student. But this time, the nurturing has offered me confidence to challenge myself and others in my practice as an Illustrator and Educator.

I also found out something new about myself as a student and the way that I learn. I was diagnosed with Dyslexia and it all made sense. It rationalised my struggles, the efforts I went to when it seemed seamlessly easy for my peers, the taboo of owning my specific learning difficulty and telling my family (the ‘dis’ in disability is bold and maybe considered a deficit in my Indian culture). I initially held great frustration about not knowing throughout most of my education. But now I can own how I learn and understand this more deeply. It’s given me a new confidence I didn’t know possible. If it wasn’t for this space to be on the PG Cert, particularly the inclusive teaching and learning unit I would not have discovered this part of me existed. I still don’t feel like I’m ‘in the ring’ but I’ve realised that doesn’t make me feel left out, it makes me feel like an individual. This confidence has allowed me to find value in my work, for myself and for students I aim to educate and learn from, because education doesn’t travel in one direction.

“Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it… Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.” Rabindranath Tagore.