Sorry for my late submission, I had problems with my computer.
I shared my dialogue with the Brazilian graphic designer and co-director of Futuress, Nina Paim. Her work usually involves many others and revolves around notions of supporting, directing and collaborating. Our conversation helped me go back to the start of my inquiry, re-think my approach and the purpose of my project.
We started our conversation talking about out backgrounds, as we both come from Latin countries (Brazil and Colombia) we shared the experience growing up in a religious context and how that shaped how we relate with spirituality today. She stated that in many contexts, religion and religious practices are associated with oppression. She questioned my interest in prayer and scripture and how I can re-think of them. Do I see prayer as liturgical practice? Can a prayer be a poem? Can a prayer be something unrelated to religion or the Bible? Who is the audience of a prayer? She challenged me to see prayer apart from liturgical practices and recommended to define what is my real interest at working with prayer. This made me take a step back to ask myself why did I chose this, what do I want to do and who is this for?
Thinking about the conversation with Nina, I can say that my experience growing up in a Christian background was positive. Personally, I never faced oppression by the church. However, I acknowledge that this is not the case for everyone (but this is another conversation), however the religious practices that I was thought and engaged with since I was a kid contribute to the woman that Iām today, they shaped the way I see the world, what values I believe . Especially prayer, has been a practice that granted me the possibility to feel closer to God in every season and every good and bad situation of my life. It has allowed me to have moments of self-reflection, of contemplation and meditation. That is the reason why I feel so intrigued by it.
For my studio practice I asked, how can I use graphic communication skills to express the formal characteristics of prayer as a verbal expression? My approach was to experiment with type manipulating the spacing between words, font size, and dynamic alignment of letters, to highlight the relationship between language, perception, and spirituality. As I saw it, letters can be arranged in a composition and create abstract, dynamic forms and reflect the formal and ritualistic nature of spiritual discourses. I experienced the relationship between language, perception and spirituality.
In that process I had the opportunity to investigate some references such as the Book of Common Prayer, intended to provide congregations and individuals instructions to practice their devotion. This book showed me how, through formal visual decisions, a designer can guide the reader to perform a text. In this case this book has a clear audience and intention. From my personal experience, I have never engaged with prayer in that way. It was useful to see not only how prayer is a communal practice that has rules and instructions, but moreover to see how through type prayer can be performed in a group or individual setting, it was interesting to contextualize and investigate it from a more structured form.
Moving forward I ask myself I asked myself what my focus should be. What I am trying to communicate? Who is my audience? What impact do I want my work to have? For now, I think I want to look deeper into prayer. It intrigues me to see it as a free and individual form of communication that allows a process of self-awareness, self-reflection and connection with the divine.