Visuelle Kommunikation / INTERNATIONAL MASTER OF DESIGN UIC / HGK FHNW

Hala Al-Ani

Voluntary Traces

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Growing up in Dubai, a city driven by a predominant mentality of merely valuing ‘the ideal’, I often find myself troubled by it. Pursuing a picture-perfect urban landscape pushed the country to eliminate any traces of age that come about with time. Preventing stains of time from emerging exposes the need to escape change and assert perpetual status. The aim of my thesis work was to formulate a method that contradicts this mind-set. I seized an opportunity to advocate change through my process by allowing external agents to alter my work quite unconditionally. Considering that materials have the ability to record the consequences of exposure to sunlight, rain, temperature, acids, use & misuse, I generated work from various materials & exposed them to such agents. The purpose was to give up my authoritarian role & to grant the work freedom to assume multiple identities over the course of its existence.