Re-Imagined Conceptual Text & Symbol, with Chantal Zakari - CANCELLED

Re-Imagined Conceptual Text & Symbol

The meanings of cultural signs are collective and it is a language that we acquire starting in childhood. Both typography and pictograms are part of our visual language that helps us form meaning. This workshop taught by Chantal Zakari is inspired by her work, Strategic Planning. Participants will critically engage with text and pictograms as a means to poetically respond to the world around us.

We will work with words and phrases of significance and pair them with deliberately selected graphic symbols to recontextualize the phrase. Artists can use their work to create stickers, postcards, posters or gain inspiration for the start of a new series. This workshop is perfect for those that would like to draw upon contemporary or social issues, personal narratives, and popular culture in their artwork. 

Please note to register you must have some working knowledge of Adobe Photoshop and/or InDesign. Participants must bring their own computers. However, printers and wifi access will be provided.

About Chantal Zakari

Chantal Zakari is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and art educator. In her work, she draws upon contemporary social issues by making connections through personal narratives, history, and popular culture. Inspired by social phenomena she positions herself in relation to a public or a sub-culture. Her studio practice freely combines research methodologies and artistic strategies borrowed from various disciplines such as photography, documentary, performance, storytelling, installation, graphic design and social interventions. With her husband and studio partner, Mike Mandel she has self-published several artist's books under the imprint Eighteen Publications: The Turk & The Jew (1997), webAffairs (2005), Taxi Rides (2009), The State of Ata (2010), They Came to Baghdad (2012), and Lockdown Archive (2015). More recently, Cogent Message and Defunct Colleges are artist’s books that question the future of US higher education. Her work is represented in Yale University Art of the Book Collection, Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Getty Research Institute Library, The Kinsey Institute Library, Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam and the Addison Gallery of American Art. Zakari is currently a Professor of the Practice at the SMFA at Tufts University and the Director at Kingston Gallery.