Referencing images from our (separate) visits to Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Dr. Kinsizer and I discuss the unexpected implications of the aesthetics of colonization in India and Turkiye respectively. Starting with the influences of Persian art and aesthetic elements in the palace, we analyze the construction of the spaces (placemaking) within the palace, and take the visual references elsewhere, while engaging in a dialogue about anti-colonial multicultural art education curriculum.

We locate this paper in a conceptual questioning of belonging (being and becoming stranger/visitor/ at home) in two separate contexts: Kinsizer unpacks representations of gender and sexuality to present a complicated reading of aesthetics within the Harem, while Sharma traces the presence of women’s spaces within Hindu and Muslim court architecture as a hybrid aesthetic.

In this dialogue, we travel from an initial location of the aesthetic form and influence of Persian art and architecture, into two distinct realms of conceptual and physical evolution of aesthetic form and function, namely gender (in the Turkish harem) and ethnicity (in India), due to colonizing actions. In doing so, we discuss the complex relationship between the ugly processes of oppression and the production of beautiful (art) forms.

The relevance of this paper, to art educators, is in contexts of teaching to critical multiculturalism, global aesthetics, and anti-colonial discourse, because through this paper, we examine:

• How might we acknowledge complexities of 'multiculturalism' in anti-colonial art curriculum? and

• How might we acknowledge the complexity of aesthetic perceptions in art teaching, by juxtaposing invisible cultural processes in teaching with visual aesthetics forms of objects and spaces?