Hello friend,

I am thrilled to announce the official launch of The Scheherazade Project, which has been in the works for several years (!).

This project includes a series of large, abstract expressionist collages, created entirely from National Geographic periodicals featuring SWANA-culture related articles, in an effort to challenge the pervasive orientalism in Western media. Each piece will feature one magazine, deconstructed in chronological order and pieced back together in a densely detailed, mosaic-like memoryscape that captures my subconscious thoughts during creation.

Alongside creating the collage series, I am implementing various documentation practices of my creative process, including in-progress photography of each piece’s composition and archival scanning of the magazine I am using. These digital files are then filtered through an artificial intelligence software that analyzes the subtle changes in composition and compares it to the archival scans taken of the magazine. This collected data is organized into different data visual models, including screen-based, interactive timelines and time-lapse video projections.

By using a widely syndicated and recognizable periodical as the source material and foundation for this series, I hope to visually show the arbitrariness of Western perspective. National Geographic is ubiquitous in U.S. culture, perpetuating an American-centric narrative of the world for over a century, arguably adding to the blatant prejudice in current news sources. Rather than share word-based research, I am presenting a visual recontextualizing of colonial perspectives, offering new ways to look at history.