Action 3 & 4 – Decolonial Design

Extending Beyond The Screen

In my quest to see nature in an urban space, I walked around in a public garden next to my house. Collecting leaves and flowers and posted it in my book. While cataloging, not knowing the names of most of them made me realize how out of tune I am with nature around me.

Breaking Down Decoloniality

I thought about the spaces that I realized are still colonized and put them down on a small piece of paper, the spaces I still don’t yet I kept them empty
Left: Me exploring the spaces of decolonization
Right: Having explored some spaces, I am trying to make sense of it.

Visual Hierarchy

While driving around in my city, I started noticing visual hierarchy in corporate brands, local banners, billboards, public signage, and national institutions.

Observations:

Corporate/International brands have english prominent text. and bigger.

Road signs have dual languages, first is the local language of the state and the second in English.

Local of small brands advertisements are in regional languages.

Personal quotes or religious saying at the back of the car are in regional language.

Seek/Sought Being

In my culture, historically a lot of importance is placed in the care of the flora and fauna around us. it is not treated as an external entity but rather as part of us. A lot of it is lost but some traditions are still carried on.

image .1 As the number of bird feeders in the old city (they are intentionally tall so animals cant attack them),

image.2-You also see random water feeders around the city in from of the houses,

image.3-People put leftover food outside of their houses for stray animals.

Just before the lockdown I had visited a local market in the old city, where some of the trades are still carried out in a traditional manner.

While moving around the city I noticed women were mostly dressed in traditional clothes while men were dressed in formal clothes. !!!!!

Clothes & Gender:

Why are women in traditional clothes?

Why men in the service sector or otherwise in modern clothes?

Why are people traditional trade still in traditional clothes?

What are the hurdles? Is it culture?

Should there be local clothes in the corporate world? How would that look like?

Knowledge Archival

In Action 1 the tattoos you saw on the women’s bodies, in Action 2 I converted them into digital format, and here I tried to make transfer them into a tangible format.

Collaboration

I did a collaboration with a artisan- Sofiaben (Sofia is her name, ben is a salutatio that is added after a female’s name in our culture) I showed her the symbols and she hand embroidered them onto a fabric.

Action 2 – Terrior An Offering

Part A

Me and Pat discussing the ingredients available to us.

Pat’s experience for me:

Charles’s experience for Pat

PART B

I had to provide feedback to Pat with visuals and without talking. the following is my feedback for her. The video I have uploaded is not playing sounds nor the gifs for some reason.

Provided visuals on my negative/positive feedback without words.
The recipe was about 16hrs, it was in process when I made the presentation.

This was really interesting for me as it was my first attempt to provide a personalized experience to someone and someone doing the same for me. It was designed with much love and care for each other. This experience felt very personal to me. I hope I take this learning and integrate into my work.