GCD colleague Anoushka Khandwala organised a roundtable discussion with several practitioners around the subject of decolonising design, these were:
Graphic designer Neebinnaukzhik Southall in Sante Fe, New Mexico
Designer and educator Ramon Tejada in Providence, Rhode Island
Designer and educator Miguel Navarro Sanint in Bogota, Colombia
Designer and educator Amy Suo Wu in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Some notes and quotes
“dismantling the Eurocentric historical design canon”
“Therefore, one way to think about “decolonizing design” is as the process of eliminating false distinctions between craft and design, in order to recognize all culturally important forms of making.”
Khandwala talks about decolonisation potentially meaning different things:
“The difficulty with a concept like decolonization, though, is that it means different things to different people in different places.”
- “de-centering the perspectives of settlers to emphasize those of the indigenous”
- “others focus on decolonization as a process of recovery and the restoration of identity”
- “still others use the term to critique Eurocentrism and modernism.”
“recognizing diversity of thought”
Southall
“as an indigenous person, it’s about centering Native voices”
Tejada
“It’s been an education thinking about decolonization in this layered, complicated context.”
Tejada
“Sometimes, decolonizing is about making space. Sometimes it’s about taking space.”
Tejada
“Decolonizing is about unearthing, shifting the glance, de-centering, giving agency, being vulnerable, making mistakes, ideation, thinking about our communities, and not so much design.”
Wu:
“As a teacher trying to disrupt this, I’m literally trying to mend the ruptures between binaries. I’m also interested in the word “mend” and reclaiming that word, which has been traditionally deemed inferior. It belongs to the realm of craft, and is associated with female labor. I use the word “mend” to describe literally and figuratively how to move forward with divides.”
Tejada
“If we say “design,” I tend to think of Design with a capital “D” as being a European thing. I heard somebody say once that you can’t teach any other Design history because Europeans created, or “discovered,” design. It’s like okay—just like you discovered America? Great… What a lot of us are interested in doing is thinking about lowercase design. “
Southall
“How many graphic design dissertations are looking at the iconography of a tribe and how it’s shaping the designers that are here? “
Wu:
“I’ve learned to look at design through her [mother] perspective—her non-elitist, local, diaspora aesthetic—and it’s been an un-learning process for me.”
On ego and collaboration
Sanint:
“When I was a student, I was taught to create something that was “mine.” Now, I can’t remember the last time I created something as only mine. I was part of something, I feel proud of it, but I feel it collectively—as in, we did this.”
Khandwala, A. (2020) “Decolonizing Means Many Things to Many People”—Four Practitioners Discuss Decolonizing Design. AIGA Eye on Design, 20 February. Available at: https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/decolonizing-means-many-things-to-many-people-four-practitioners-discuss-decolonizing-design/ (Accessed 7 December 2024)