While global platforms provide wider recognition for ‘Afrikan’ design, they present challenges such as cultural appropriation and the erosion of indigenous knowledge (Oguibe, 2002). Through an Afrikan-centred and critical design approach, there is the potential to challenge the dominant narrative and foster cultural resilience by grounding creative practices in Rasa principles. Rasa theory is an aesthetic framework derived from classical Indian philosophy (Pandit 2024). This paper addresses the challenge of preserving ‘Afrikan’ cultural identity and fostering societal engagement through design.

Despite the development of Practice-Led Research (PLR) to acknowledge the centrality of practice in the pursuit of research outcomes, the methodology still seems to be confined by the necessity to separate out the cognitive/conscious processes (of writing, for example) from the phenomenological and body/mind dynamics at play in the creative process. This confinement seems to be a product of duality or a binary research system as espoused in the West. The central thesis of this paper, therefore, is to attempt to demonstrate a potential strategy that circumvents or collapses this dichotomy. This paper sets a triadic relationship between/among practice-led research, Kasulis’ (2002) theorising of intimacy in understanding, and the eastern philosophy of Rasa, in the pursuit of wisdom.

This paper explores the relationship between Indian aesthetics, ethics and performance art by engaging  in  the  process,  the  cultural  influences  and  application  of  aesthetic  judgments  on performance artists.  A predominantly western aesthetic judgment is applied to artworks created and the application of an alternative as rasa aesthetics in terms of ethics will be discussed.