Zahra Al-Khalidi
Week 1 – Introduction to Sustainability
Off-Site visit – Tate Modern
– Pascale Marthine Tayou
– Nairy Baghramian
– Jagoda Buic
Artist responses using recycled materials
Week 2 – Emerging Technologies in Fashion
Experimenting with Exposure
Experimenting primary research onto body
Week 3 – Nature
Drawing and sampling dried roses.
Week 4 – Cultural Sustainability
Arabic Culture – Using palm tree leaves to create textile pieces or objects
When I thought of cultural sustainability I was trying to think of sustainable work practices within my own culture. This then led me to think about my visit to my home country last year and about what items I was surrounded by. I then realised that most household objects like the broom sticks and storage equipment were all made from the leaves of the palm trees. I then researched about it which led me to know that this has been a cultural tradition for years and years. It is also very common in all Middle Eastern countries. Especially families living in the suburbs and farmers. Since palm leaves fall from the trees constantly, they gather the fallen material to create these items, or textile pieces.
Week 5 – Empathy
Fashion designer Céline Semaan who is Lebanese-Canadian, is based in New York City. She formed the Slow Factory Foundation, an advocacy group, to advance sustainable design and socially conscious business practices. The organization’s outreach and education division hosts courses on sustainable fashion.
Semaan’s narrative, as an activist and an industry insider, sheds light on the various ways that fashion has to change as well as what goes on behind the scenes.
Reflection
In the process of discovering and investigating, I have loved experimenting and incorporating many techniques. I liked how every week, the focus of our lectures was on bringing attention to issues like sustainability and the environment and how they may benefit the fashion business. My understanding of sustainability has grown as a result of my research and education. As designers, there are numerous ways to reduce waste, such as recycling and repurposing leftover fabric to try new things and produce different results rather than tossing it away. My use of discarded materials to produce samples and various textures inside the project went well. This gives me a lot of motivation to use recycled materials and fabrics in my work going forward. “Nature” is one of my favorite sections. Since you can copy so many of the textures and patterns found in nature, I find it to be quite inspiring. I wish I had experimented with nature more. It would have been interesting to see how things like creating my own material or using fruits or vegetables to make a natural colour would have worked out. During my career as a designer, I plan to include sustainability into my work and be careful of the waste I produce. This unit has provided me with a lot of inspiration for that.
I saw that you put the works you saw and liked at the Tate museum of your blog, and I really like this three artworks you chose. I also noticed that you have labelled each artwork, which shows that you have taken your visit to the museum seriously and have paid attention to the artists who made them. But I would like to see more descriptions of these artists, so that I would have a better understanding of the background of these works. And I would love to see some of your insights into the works. My suggestion is that, for example, for the first artwork, it can link with our lecture of nature, and I think that you could make a sketch and a sample, I can totally imagine that this sample is beautiful, because this work looks so harmonious without being regularly intertwined. It’s an installation of different materials, you can collage it with different fabrics or embroider it in different ways to show the texture of each part of it. The second artwork you put, which I also like,I can see that it’s a tooth and braces to straighten it. I really like the detail the artist has crafted on this tooth, He has produced a vivid look of the yellowed and decayed form of the tooth and the unevenness. I could see the artist exploring the broken relationship between the body and its surroundings.The third artwork has a really beautiful name, it’s called Fallen Angel, and I can see that it’s an irregularly shaped wall hanging that has been knitted with different woolen threads, and the two parts of draping black threads are perhaps the wings that the name refers to.Thanks so much for sharing the artworks which you like!