- CollegeCentral Saint Martins
- CourseMA Graphic Communication Design
- Graduation year2023
How can illustration of personal memory be developed through ‘margins’ and depict the passage of time? Additionally, how can these depictions provide the collective contexts within which the memories exist - such as the linguistic identity, location, rituals, politics, socio-economics, cultural artefacts and history?
Through a triptych of risograph-printed illustrations, the studio project shows a non-linear narrative of growing older where a central, almost utopian childhood memory is nestled within margins that unfold how the experience of something has changed over time. The outer border, with mirrors and reflections situates the story in the present and makes its immediate surroundings and onlookers a part of frame. It is still growing.
Final work
Research and process
The Margins of Memory (2023)
The initial enquiry was prompted by a closer understanding of traditional South-Asian miniature paintings and their process of making. The stories I wanted to tell through the project were about time, growth and nostalgia. Therefore, it was important to structure them using visual languages that are not only close to the subjects but also allow for the multiplicity of objects, phrases, places and patterns that are involved in the act of recalling a memory.
This project also uses design philosophies from the Kalighat style of painting. South-Asian (Mughal) miniature and its predecessor from the Safavid dynasty eventually flow into several distributaries, one of which (in Bengal, in conjunction with its pre-existing indigenous art styles) manifests as the economically and mass-produced Kalighat paintings. These were limited in colour palette, focused more on satire and although still depicted life of the affluent, it was not with ornamental reverence.
The choice to work with a limited colour palette and risograph which can be easily reproduced came from this local context.
A triptych of risograph printed illustrations titled from L to R: Age & Authority, Groceries and Moving In Moving Out.
Process
The video is a collection of notes, captions, sketches, vlogs and production process that documents the assembling of the illustrations and animation.
Triangulating my position as a designer, author and protagonist in this series, three texts and practices influenced the research process.
- Ruth Behar's text The Vulnerable Observer where she comments, “What bothers critics is the insertion of personal stories into what we have been taught to think of as the analysis of impersonal social facts. Throughout most of the twentieth century, in scholarly fields ranging from literary criticism to anthropology to law, the reigning paradigms have traditionally called for distance, objectivity, and abstraction. The worst sin was to be “too personal.”
- Monica Juneja's essay On The Margins of Utopia - One more look at Mughal Painting which traces the practice of ornamental borders in miniatures as a narrative device where “different chronological moments and sequences of the event are brought together within a single pictorial frame: the image no longer functions as inscription of a particular memory, rather it becomes a process."
- The work of Moroccan contemporary artist and photographer Hassan Hajjaj. In his celebratory images, he often makes use of cans and jars in a repeating motif. This imagery grounds the people within the picture to specific histories and subcultures. In my piece titled ‘Groceries’, the impact of this is evident.
Share this project
The Margins of Memory (2023)
How can illustration of personal memory be developed through ‘margins’ and depict the passage of time? Additionally, how can these depictions provide the collective contexts within which the memories exist - such as the linguistic identity, location, rituals, politics, socio-econ...
A link to this page has been added to your clipboard