Feminist Fabric Senior Thesis Exhibition
Feminist Fabric was my BFA senior thesis exhibition, combining my love for fashion and advocacy into an exploration of the intersection of clothing and feminist activism in the contemporary era. With this exhibition, I explored how graphic design can be used as a medium of change and how it has been applied by activists past and present to highlight socio-political issues. I thoroughly researched a few different modern waves of feminism and channeled my findings into different media to thoughtfully and effectively communicate the importance of activism to my audience.
My ultimate goal in designing this installation was to create an immersive environment that encouraged viewers to get involved and take action by showcasing the accessibility and locality of activism. To do this, I created a five-minute video to be projected for an immersive environment, informational zines to distribute and provide context, and buttons to be distributed and spread the message outside the gallery.
Feminst Fabric was one installation out of a ten-student collaborative BFA exhibition in Julian Hall at Illinois State University.
Exhibition Curation, Print Production, Video/Motion Graphics
Adobe Illustrator, Adobe AfterEffects, & Adobe InDesign | Various Sizes | Print & Digital
Video Projection
This projection video experience was the first part of the installation that I created . It is a combination of clips of real-life activism and performaces of the movements and events discussed in the zine, and testimonials of women who were actually involved in them. This video was projected in the installation space to show viewers in large-scale visuals and spoken words the reality and impact of activism.
Zine
To provide more context for the content in the video, the next deliverable I created for this project was an informational zine.
Instead of focusing on broader movements like in the video, I chose to highlight certain articles of clothing that were used as symbols of protest in each movement in the zine. Zines are a historically significant catalyist of activism, and are rooted in design and visual communication.
To make the installation feel as authentic as possible, I put together a zine table to display and distribute the zines and other items. Zines have been a wildly impactful tool used by feminists, notably Riot Grrrls, to spread information and educate readers on their cause providing essential information to those looking to get involved.
Buttons
I also designed a set of buttons and display cards to hand out to audience members as they stopped by my table. With the focus of my research being clothing and apparel, I decided that buttons- a wearable form of protest- would be the perfect way to keep viewers thinking about this project outside the gallery. The button variations each feature a slogan and design aesthetic specific to the movements showcased in the zine.
Each button was also placed on a specially designed display card. When flipped over, the card provides ideas and resources on how to get involved in local activism.
Process Book
The last task in this semester-long project was to create a process book to document each step of the exhibition development process.
This book details elements from research, to design, to production, and provides deeper insight into why and how I made each creative choice for Feminist Fabric.