Paper short abstract:

The embody practices as various forms of art created and performed by African students in China. With arts, express their identity and call for togetherness through art, using digital space to transmit their attitudes and engage in promoting the multicultural understanding.

Paper long abstract:

African students are increasingly finding their way to China as destination for higher education with number grown from 1,384 in the year of 1999 to 18,562 in the year of 2018. Their individuality, as well as their belonging to the International student and African student communities cultivating and accommodating their cosmopolitan status and Pan-African identities. As embody theory, the body is a vital site of identity construction and materialization that carries all our identifiers like skin color, hair color, religion, physical characteristics, language, abilities. The embody practices as various forms of art created and performed by African students in China, including hair styling, paintings, fashion design, music, dancing and stand-up comedy, that “speak out” about the incompatibility and suffering of African students and motivate individuals to resist inequality, racism and discrimination. With arts, express their identity and call for togetherness through art, using digital space and new media platforms to transmit their attitudes and mobilizing audiences to question existing social structures and engage in promoting the multicultural understanding. Such practices reflect not only the imagination of multicultural engagement and reinforcing their Pan-African identity as well as cosmopolitan global student status, but also demonstrate the potential of artistic empowerment as a creative way to resist falling into the margins.