ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Uncorporate Identity
by Metahaven
Metahaven talks about “design’s ability to visualise” (Metahaven, 2010, p. 6) what is apparent and what is not there or that goes unnoticed. I have previously used this text for a different brief, and it’s interesting to see how it continues to affect my current positions. My initial intention behind capturing personal moments and spaces in Bombay was to focus on building a connection with my home city that didn’t feel like home. However, I realised I was so focused on my frustrations that I didn’t notice the moments that brought me peace and comfort and provided me with that sense of belonging I was searching for.
Our brains have an automated baseline of what we have seen before. As a result, when seeing new visuals or re-processing older ones, our mind takes in what we see and connects with our memory for better comprehension and communication. Photographing these moments allowed for a different but familiar interpretation of Bombay – I was creating new realities for myself through these visuals.
Metahaven and Vishmidt, M. (2010) ‘Intro Riff’ in Uncorporate Identity. Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, pp. 2-49.
What Do Pictures Want?
by W. J. T. Mitchell
What do we expect from pictures? – We want to identify its greater value or meaning and seek to analyse its various formal elements. What do pictures expect from us? – Pictures want to be seen or not be seen, sometimes all at once and sometimes in pieces or fragments. Maybe they want to be interacted with in other forms than just being perceived through vision. The photographs I’ve captured share a mutually beneficial relationship with their viewers. They have desires and demands like their viewers, and both actively influence one another. Mitchell explores this realm of visual culture and argues that there has been a “pictorial turn” in the contemporary civilisation that indicates a rise in the power and importance of pictures and images and encourages us to be perceptive and mindful of the visual culture.
Mitchell, W. (2005) “What Do Pictures Want?”, What Do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Ways of Seeing
by John Berger
The way we see is determined by what we know. The way we see is a conscious and subconscious act. It is not just about looking; it is about critically examining the relationship between yourself and the subject of observation. The way we see not only reflects our culture and identity but also our perspective on the subject. Photography allows us to use our sensibility to communicate something about ourselves and the world around us. All images offer a meaningful account of how their creator sees the world. Further, when we look at someone else’s image, our understanding of it depends on our way of seeing it. Images have a deeper meaning beyond what they show on the surface. You need to see past the initial observations, observe them in new ways, and elevate their essence into something special.
Berger, J. (1973) Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Book Ltd.
The Common Tongue of Twenty-First-Century London
by Rebecca Mead
Mead reflects on the complicated nature of home and insightfully investigates the “sense of displacement”, and heartache one feels leaving an adopted country to return to your homeland. She moved from Brooklyn to London, where she was born. However, since she had not lived in England for more than 30 years, the experience was a mix of reconciliation and estrangement. Her homeland no longer felt like home. My experience of living in New York and Bombay revealed an emotional limbo state; I never fully arrived and never fully left. I’m always searching for a connection to Bombay, the city I grew up in and comparing it to my connection with New York. Through this photo series, I investigate the idea of home and how it extends beyond its physical manifestation. Home can be a location, a person, a moment, a state of mind, or an emotion that provides you with a sense of belonging.
Mead, R. (2022) ‘The Common Tongue of Twenty-First-Century London’, The New Yorker, February 6. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/the-common-tongue-of-twenty-first-century-london (Accessed 18 May 2022).
Code Switch
by Lubna Chowdhary
Chowdhary’s graphic ceramic collection Code Switch merges her mixed heritage and cultural identities. Her artworks enhance the viewer’s sensory experience by igniting beautiful and natural cognitive responses to its emotionally relatable concept. It builds an initial connection between the viewer and the artwork. Chowdhary’s work pushes you to acknowledge and appreciate the extent of the qualitative relationship that physical objects can establish with their users. Like Chowdhary, my concept and object is of sentimental value; it is meant to evoke comfort, positive nostalgia and emotion and remind you of your own home. Thus, maintaining its interactivity and connection with the viewer and ensuring its value is not limited to that of the strictly visual but also of emotional importance.
Chowdhary, L. (2021). Code Switch [Ceramic Panels]. Available at: https://jhavericontemporary.com/exhibitions/code-switch (Accessed 23 May 2022).
If one uses soft words, even plain rice tastes good
by Priyanka Kaul
Living between cultures, Kashmiri Australian designer Priyanka Kaul reimagines her homeland – Kashmir – in provincial Japan through this reflective photobook. The book poetically centres around a series of Kashmiri proverbs and stories set and shot in Nagano, Japan. The proverbs come to life through a narration of contemporary photographs paired with snippets of conversations had with Kaul’s friends and family, creating a more personal study of home and heritage. She uses this book to connect to the birthplace she’s never gotten to visit but yearns to build a connection with. Similarly, through this zine and mini photo series, I have captured brief flashes of connection that I experienced with Bombay – the city I grew up in but struggled and desired to connect with. I explore moments of silence and pause, filled with comfort, vulnerability, and peace. These moments capture a piece of my identity and the dwindling love I have for the city I once called home.
Kaul, P. (2021). If one uses soft words, even plain rice tastes good. Melbourne: Oak Park Studio.
EXTENDED CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Ways of Seeing
by John Berger
Through the unusually striking design and layout, Berger puts across the notion that words are inadequate when it comes to communicating what we perceive and how we perceive the world. Seeing is a necessary practice that elevates the subject and fills the gap between words and sight. The way we see is determined by what we know. The way we see – it is a conscious and subconscious act. It is not just about looking; it is about critically examining the relationship between yourself and the subject of observation. The way we see not only reflects our culture and identity but also our perspective on the subject. Every form of art offers a meaningful account of how its creator sees the world. Further, when we look at someone else’s art, our understanding of it depends on our way of seeing it.
The first chapter states that our perceptions of art are manipulated by and reliant on several factors – our lived experiences, knowledge of artistic styles and techniques, assumptions and awareness of art history and the social, political, cultural, and economic conventions of its time. Art forms motivate and challenge our critical and analytical thinking capabilities, sense of fantasy, and originality. They inform us about themselves, their culture, and their creator. They encourage us to interpret them in unlimited ways, and they form a dialogue between the past and present, helping us translate the world we live in.
Berger goes on to argue about how the invention of the camera has challenged traditional ways of seeing and how factors like photographic reproduction, academic studies, and financial worth have changed the way we perceive art. Art has now become a commodity. Berger discusses oil paintings as an example and links the eminence of oil paintings from the Renaissance to capitalism and an inclination to showcase personal wealth and status. He writes, “The art of any period tends to serve the ideological interests of the ruling class. Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects. Everything became interchangeable because everything became a commodity. All reality was mechanically measured by its materiality.” The medium of oil on canvas was the ideal representation of power and prestige. Berger challenged these elitist perceptions of art and transformed it into a new radical way of thinking where art is an accessible and a genuine tangible interest. He states that art constantly changes, and he questions everything in relation as no concept is ever definitive.
Berger’s theorising reflects prejudices and makes us question how art could be created, interpreted, and appreciated in a classless and independent society. What would we see, and would we see it differently? How would we ensure deeper seeing so as to observe and explore the subject effectively? Art and other visuals have a more complex meaning beyond what they show on the surface. Ways of Seeing encourages us to be mindful of the profound emotional effects any form of art can have on its viewer.
Berger, J. (1973) Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Book Ltd.
Code Switch
by Lubna Chowdhary
Today’s contemporary visual culture and media landscape are saturated by the dominance and influence of naturally interactive digital technologies. With their ability to continuously modify, these digital graphics allow a connection with their users that extends in time. As these digital processes improve, physical and printed objects risk being replaced. Lubna Chowdhary’s culturally hybrid collection Code Switch challenges these current digitally biased presumptions and encourages a rethinking of the value of engagement with physical artworks in the graphic world.
Born in Tanzania to Indian, then post-partition, Pakistani Muslim parents who migrated to the north of England in the 1970s, Chowdhary brings in her transcultural heritage as the primary inspiration for her work. She merges her cultural identities – the relationship between East and West, their differences, and styles to create layered graphic ceramic patterns. Her family comes from a textile industry background, and you can see how that served as an inspiration to create bright-coloured minimal geometric formations. Through her work, she creates a nostalgic visual language that represents the multiple diverse fragments of her identity.
Drawn on Adobe Illustrator, then cut using precise waterjet technology, and glazed by hand in her studio – Chowdhary uses a unique combination of industrial and handmade techniques. The pieces are then grouped in small ceramic compositions and displayed leaned against the wall, giving the work a new perspective and an interesting sense of horizon. Each work creates a synergy between its bold colour, shape, and pattern. The glazed graphics offer infinite opportunities for engagement with the viewer by allowing their eye to explore its natural path, pausing on individual pieces or larger groups.
The artworks enhance the viewer’s sensory experience by igniting beautiful and natural cognitive responses to its emotionally relatable concept. Chowdhary’s work pushes you to acknowledge and appreciate the extent of the qualitative relationship that physical objects can establish with their users. It builds an initial connection between the viewer and the artwork, maintaining its interactivity and ensuring its value is not limited to that of the strictly visual but also transcends into the distinctively instinctual.
Chowdhary, L. (2021). Code Switch [Ceramic Panels]. Available at: https://jhavericontemporary.com/exhibitions/code-switch (Accessed 23 May 2022).
