DOMESTIC ORNAMENT

In a dizzying world of branding and self-promotion, political discord and increasing environmental disasters, it is easy to shut down. We will resist this urge and attempt to find personal design languages with which to respond to the world we live in with renewed engagement. More than seek an aesthetic preference or style, we will investigate our histories, memories, and motives.

The ornament embedded in our everyday surroundings and domestic objects—lace curtains, embroidered tablecloths, painted ceramics—acts as a visual language which links us to a common past, a specific design genealogy. During the first part of the workshop, each day will be structured around a single theme - domestic interior, handwork, heritage, symbolism, clothing, toys and tools, decor. We will explore these through various activities, from collecting and conversing to reflecting and writing and finally to sketching and modeling in order to build individual collections of colors, shapes, materials, and textures which decode our visual inheritance.

In the second part of the workshop we will test these personal design approaches by re-engaging with the environment, the world outside ourselves. Each student will develop a unique piece in visual dialogue with the landscape of Yahşibey, thus layering personal and communal, interior and exterior impressions. These pieces will come together to create a group installation that reinterprets the traditional form of a collective ‘quilt.’