The Coloniality of Access

The modern colonial framework within which the museum and/or galleries, art fairs and art education exist, serves the most (colonially) educated respondents of society. This framework positions art as the marker of the relationship between cultural activities, education and society – a society riddled with gross race, gender, class and sexual inequalities. The least (or worst colonially) educated are unable to access or fully understand the industry on all levels as a result of this framework. Webster cites Pierre Bourdieu in his opinion on how this dispels the notion that museums and galleries - their structure, rituals and forms - are ‘open’ to everyone. Webster continues to state that according to Bourdieu, any aesthetic reading of a painting requires the viewer to possess the correct “codes” in deciphering the formal and symbolic aspects of work constructed. These “codes” are only obtainable through modern colonial education. Qualitatively, through interviews and focus groups with black art professionals and the black layman outside the industry; as well as short-lived participant observation of art education at the University of Pretoria, this paper aims to reveal and analyse the colonial power matrix of access to museums, art galleries (Standard Bank Art Gallery) and art fairs (FNB Art Fair) in Johannesburg, South Africa. In a power matrix that is driven by capitalism – a modern colonial vice – this paper explores the economies of access that natives occupy and briefly inquires about the possible decoloniality of this access.