DUBAI: Dubai Design Week program Abwab features work by five creatives responding to the theme ‘In Other Words.' The design fair runs until Nov. 8.
‘A Library of Paper Memories’
Grace Shieh’s work combines her practices as a poet, maker, and artist, she tells Arab News, and “explores paper as language itself, recentering this silent carrier of stories as narrative and narrator.” Some of the paper pieces include her experimental poetry “as a way to reimagine storytelling, explore modal writing, and activate a readership that is seeking rather than receiving.”
‘Cheent Devanagari’
“My response to ‘In Other Words’ is a typeface I designed through a decolonial lens, inspired by the art of block printing,” Dubai-based designer Kanaka Raghavan says. “My approach was to learn the craft of typeface design through Devanagari, a script I grew up reading and writing, and one that’s shared by more than 120 languages.” In his immersive installation, “what you can read depends on where you stand, which challenges the idea that there’s only one fixed or universal way of reading.”
‘Non/Sense’
Conceptual artist UBIK’s floor-based piece was inspired by Philip K. Dick’s “How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later.” “I play with the tension between words that appear familiar and those that resist comprehension. By placing text within a physical space, I extend these ideas into our experience of navigating and interpreting our surroundings, questioning our need to make sense of everything we encounter,” UBIK explains.
Shhhhh
Lebanese multidisciplinary artist Dalia Rafeh explores the Arabic language and visual expression through her work “Shhhhhhhh,” which transforms the Arabic letter “ش “ into a seven-meter installation.
“My work ‘Shhhhh’ responds to the theme ‘In Other Words’ by exploring silence as a form of language," she said.
"We live in a world filled with noise, where words are constantly spoken, repeated, and consumed, yet often seem to have lost their meaning. I chose to explore what happens when language fails us. Can silence communicate what words no longer can? Through a large-scale red neon installation, ‘Shhhhh’ becomes both a visual statement and a call for quiet. It invites us to pause, reflect, and question what silence means to each of us."
Taleem
Creative duo VARUSSI, comprising Owais Asif Khan and Samreen Junaid Wani, began with a question.
“Our response to ‘In Other Words’ began with the question, “What if language could be experienced rather than read?” We looked at ‘Taleem,’ the system of notation used in Kashmiri carpet weaving and Kani shawl making, where sequences of symbols, numbers and colours guide the maker in translating a design into a finished pattern. What interested us was the relationship between the instruction and the outcome, and how a complex image can emerge through the interpretation and repetition of a set of codes," they said in a shared statement.
