Geometry in Art? Scenes of a Colonisation of the Look and the Thinking in Mathematics Education

Abstract

Background: Wouldn’t the transformations of artworks over time be the most convincing record of how geometry was historically practised and transformed? Now, it seems that research on geometry, whether as a theory or a school subject, leads us to a no less important problem linked to its effects and modulations on subjectivity. In mathematics education, one sees the agency of art for a very specific purpose: learning geometry through art. However, geometry is not just a set of theorems, concepts, and forms to be apprehended; it is also a device that, imprinted on our thinking, makes us talk about the world and its things. That is, it participates in the game of relations of power, knowledge, being, life, and nature, producing truths reiterated and subordinated by the ways of looking, thinking, and representing. Objectives: This article aims to analyse aspects of the relationship between geometry and art that put into practice a colonial matrix of power in mathematics education. Design: To do so, some scenes are presented, such as body-scene, space-scene, and nature-scene, considering geometry and art in its historical and educational forms. Setting and Participants: It is supported by art, art history, and research that articulates art and geometry. Data collection and analysis: Examples of the use of geometry in art are raised, analysing, through visuality, the functioning of a practice that produces and reproduces the presence and effects of the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being. Results: A geometrised fictional reality is revealed and conditioned by the ways of looking, thinking, and representing, in which geometry, operated with art, conforms and puts into practice a colonial thought, fostering the destabilisation of power and knowledge relations. Conclusions: Finally, the question is: Are we creating in our educational practices possibilities of deterritorialisations, lines of flight, decoloniality, to venture with other attitudes within the disciplinary devices in mathematics education? Therefore, it is necessary to think more about the truths put forward than to affirm them: for a new ethical, aesthetic, and political ethos in mathematics education.