Objects and New Materialisms: A Journey Across Making and Living With Objects

Materials, making, and objects are important parts of an ecology of meaningful learning and teaching in art that must accompany the development of concept and social impact. New materialist theory suggests that matter matters to how life is lived, while emphasizing that animacy is inherent not only to what we think of as animate beings but to all types of matter. The author explores what new materialism is and its relationship with making, materials, and objects in her own practices and in visual art education. Through deepened understandings of their material articulations of the world, makers and learners construct new knowledge and thickened experiences, and they develop firsthand sensitivities to making that help them find the “causal structures” (Barad, 2007) underlying what they do. This “knowing in being” (Hickey-Moody & Page, 2016, p. 12) can be transformative with regard to how a maker/student/person interacts with and lives in the world.