why is opp so blue?

with blue we indicate that conceptions and appellations of 'knowledge' are never neutral.

blue crops up peskily in 'art history' around the world, with its material reality of rarely occuring natural pigmentation shaping our depictions of value in cultural iconographies. the environment influences our story telling and our emotional associations. the history of blue is weaved into our moral consciousness – into religion, empire, technological innovation. we did not have to monetize on blue, but we did. blue is traded by and represents the wealthy and the powerful, who tell the stories of value. and then blue is also questioned and subvertible as it is made more accessible. the story of blue (contingently)shaping our depictions, power plays, and associations of value parallels our environmentally and social-mediated experiences and conceptions of reality.

with blue we indicate that conceptions and appellations of 'knowledge' are never neutral. our intuitive sense of necessity depends upon environmentally and socially mediated contingency –ungrounded. only by interrogating and critically engaging with seemingly ‘self-evident’ ideas will we become more conscious of the constructed labyrinths of 'reason.'
for example, our associations of the colour blue with royalty and ... oxford ... arise from such a cultural legacy. the rarity and expense of the natural pigment meant that blue became associated with the elite. the use of the ‘oxford’ blue, therefore, plays conjointly with the university's, and colour’s, power.

we recognise this domineering and later rebelling history of blue. we seek to think critically about the (art) rules passed down to us. the sky can still be a beautiful blue, and valuable in this relation. blue did not have to become a colour of conquest and capital, but again and again it did. we still live with this.

in this new instagram series we will be tracing our materially influenced iconographies of power structures over time, through focusing on blue.

note: this historical timeline is not absolute & any omissions are by no means ideologically intentional.

- Alicehank Winham