Week 1 - Research Task

“What is your research task this week is to assess the field of communication within which you want to develop your self-initiated project.”

My Idea - Identity in Transit. If identity is built through environment, what happens when the environment is constantly changing?

My self-initiated project will explore the idea of identity as something that is constantly shaped by our surroundings, jobs, spaces, and relationships. Moving frequently as a child because of my parents’ work, and later adapting to hostels, tents, and capsule hotels as a traveller, I have come to feel at home everywhere and nowhere. This instability has made me aware of how fragile identity can feel when it is tied to impermanent environments.

Modern life increasingly produces this condition of transience and precarity. From unstable housing to temporary contracts and shifting communities, many people today experience a kind of identity in motion. Who we are becomes dependent on what surrounds us in the moment, and when those surroundings disappear, our sense of self shifts with them.

My project will reflect on this theme of precarious belonging, connecting my own experience of temporary homes with wider cultural questions about what it means to build an identity in unstable circumstances. The outcome may take the form of a zine or visual essay, combining photography, collage, typography and personal narrative. Each spread could represent a different “home” , a tent, a ferry cabin, a train seat, as fragments of identity.

Research will explore themes of identity, displacement, and belonging, alongside case studies of designers and artists who have worked with ideas of impermanence and transience. The final work will aim to capture both the personal and political dimensions of what it means to live in transit, asking whether identity can ever be fixed when the world around us is constantly changing.

“Who are the designers, artists and makers that are critical to this area of design? How might their work inform your own creative direction?”

Mona Hatoum

A Palestinian artist whose work explores exile, displacement, and the fragility of home. She often uses domestic objects (beds, furniture, kitchenware) and transforms them into unsettling sculptures that highlight the precarity of belonging. Her work challenges what we see before us, objects representing the human body. I like the fact that her mediums cover things from front light to metal to hair. Her use of symbolism and representation is something I could take inspiration from. I like that “she constantly wants us to question the world around us” (White Cube, 2023), and that's something I'm aiming to capture in my project, questioning this sense of identity and the self.

Another exhibition Mona created is called the 'Remains of the Day', which was inspired by a visit she made to Hiroshima, which was a big disaster that happened over 70 years ago, the dropping of the atomic bomb. She studies “the suddenness of it all”, White Cube (2023). Mona really makes you question the stability of what we have, our homes, our families, down to our fingernails, everything we know.

I'm not sure how helpful this artist research has been, but I am attempting to look into artists for this research task. I think I need to tunnel in on my idea first before doing any further research.

“Make notes about the topics that interest you and consider the characteristics of your personal interests, identity and experiences.”

My Main Interests are:

Motion Graphics