Strata
Creating anti-racist objects
Faculty Leads:
Jessica Jacobs
Chris Rudd
Class:
Politics of Design
Student:
Adithya Ravi
“As designers, artists and creative practitioners our work is a symbol of what we stand for. We imbue our work with messages that we want to communicate either as an intervention or as a subvention to human experience. In this project, I consciously embed an object with a specific reflection on racism as a practice as opposed to the concept that we attempt to fight everyday.”
For this piece, I tried to tap into a specific context of racism. I began with the conception that racism can manifest itself as the forced adoption of a prominent and universally sanctified culture (more explicitly, Western culture) and the traditions that emerge as a result of that cultural premise. The object is a flower pot. However, the staggered rings cause a disruption in the form that disturbs the aesthetic and the function of the flower pot. This becomes a symbol of resistance to conform to the aesthetic of the sanctified culture that influences the prevalent design aesthetic while also refusing to function adequately thereby echoing a sort of boycott towards “being used” to spread that “superior” culture (resistance against stratification). The final aspect I would call attention to is the materiality. Western culture has sanctified the use of certain materials (plastic and sheet metal) to convey the politics of an object both from the perspective of who must buy that object and how durable that object may be. This flower pot can be made using a plethora of materials like jute fibre, cork and bamboo that are not just locally available in other cultures and communities but are also a symbol for pushing back on the Western notions of stability, durability and appropriate function.