In this new body of work Lesley Loksi Chan looks at educational materials used in North American elementary schools to reflect on broader issues of identity formation and to think through processes of knowledge, learning, and decision-making.
The particular sets of felt cut-outs used in this series were manufactured/printed during the late 1960s-1980s, a time when discourses of “diversity” were shifting but not yet normalized across dominant teaching methods.
Though such materials were originally intended to be used for children, these pedagogical tools are re-contextualized here as cultural artifacts to address wider concerns at play both inside and outside the classroom including reflections on the complicated experience of memory and nostalgia.