Belonging, Informing, Displacing

The South-asian arts and cultural space in berlin is diverse and multi-faceted, in terms of origins, genders and artforms. This festival aims to bring together an array of such cultural practitioners in a 3-day series.

The festival invites the public to engage with the political and artistic footprint of South-asians in Berlin and participate in workshops in various forms of expression.

South asian arts and textiles are widely represented in visual imagery relating to the region and have historically been of an orientalising effect. The visual challenge here was to signal an identity visually rooted in South asia, but at the same time staying away from self-oxoticising imagery.

We chose to take weaving patterns found in textiles from the north India and south Pakistan region of Sindh and Kutch, and simplify their geometry to a basic shape. This was repeated with digitally coded gradients over various use cases.