The Afterschool Special Podcast Vol. 4 Orientalism and Identity: Design as a Tool to Represent, Repress, and Reclaim
The Afterschool Special Vol. 4 is joined by Imad Gebrayel Creative Director and Ethnographic Researcher.
With a body of work combining memory, identity, and decoloniality, Imad looks at design with a critical lens diverging from eurocentric education and artistic trends.
While advocating for separating design from the art school, he decided to break away from the predefinied academic structures and pursue a Ph.D. in Ethnology after two design degrees. His field research is centered around negotiations of memory and identifications in Sonnenallee - known as the Arab street of Berlin.
At the Afterschool Special, Imad will discuss identity representation in design, looking at examples from popular culture contributing to an Orientalist, reductivist gaze, and propagating othering. Design, a capitalist domain par excellence, has been heavily involved in mediating colonial notions through visual narratives, reshaping memory, and reproducing discrimination. How can designers reposition their work, make space for minorities, and abstain from recolonizing cultural experiences? How can criticality serve design and vice versa?