- CollegeLondon College of Communication
- CourseMA Design for Social Innovation and Sustainable Futures
- Graduation year2025
This project is an exploration of practical methodologies to facilitate Epistemic Liberation by directly challenging Narrative Gatekeeping. Anchored in Freirean Praxis and Decolonial Critique, the project utilises co-creation to transform objects structured by systemic injustice. This intervention prompts engagement in an internal protest, reclaiming agency over imposed labels. It asserts that the design of identity is a fundamental tool for liberation. The work will ask viewers: Who has been defining your identity? By focusing on the invisible categorisations enforced by structures like the ID card, it will demonstrate that individuals have the agency to challenge and change these systems.
small is radical.
As Desmond Tutu stated, neutrality in injustice is alignment with the oppressor. This work is about a visible and collective design to question power structures.
Final work
Mapping Layers of Identity
This workshop was a creative space centred on tangible identity mapping. The activity began with participants creating Personal Identity Charts to transform the complex, abstract concept of identity into a visible, organised form. Next, participants used design and art to re-interpret the narrative of an identity-based object. This exercise involved identifying everyday items that carry imposed narratives. For example, participants reimagined their objects, such as an inhaler carrying narratives of "flaw," or a soft toy carrying narratives of "childishness" or "comfort."
Participants then redesigned these objects' labels to reclaim the object's narrative, asserting their own truth over systemic or social judgment. This workshop effectively demonstrated how Narrative Gatekeeping exists even in the most personal possessions.
IDENTITY DECONSTRUCTED EXHIBIT
Through a continuous process of learning, co-design, and facilitation in workshops focused on conflicts in currency and mapping layers of identity, this project has generated the first wave of Artefacts of Liberation. The exhibition will showcase these diverse outcomes, each representing a unique avenue for Epistemic Liberation against imposed narratives.
- Redesigned Currency Notes challenge the question: Whose values do we carry?
- Activist Stickers that rebrand identity by deconstructing the narrative gatekeeping embedded in everyday objects.
- Postcards featuring the "Activist Worm" and its story of liberation, prompting personal declarations of freedom. This is accompanied by a link to a video made in collaboration with shadow puppeteers from India.
- Interactive ID Posters inviting participants to actively design and claim their own multi-layered identities.
(The creation of some of these artefacts happens during the exhibit itself.)
Research and process
Re-interpreting Rigid Narratives of Identities
The project's methodology is a continuous cycle of reflection and action. Through conducting workshops as sites of intervention, observing how participants engage with tools designed to deconstruct rigid identity categories. Each workshop generates data from redesigned currency notes and activist stickers to co-created puppet narratives and personal ID cards. This iterative process allows to understand how individuals reclaim agency and assert self-determined truths against imposed narratives.
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