Moving away from existing disciplinary definitions and medium-specific approaches, the Biennial examines how today’s graphic designers play a crucial role in tasks as diverse as entrepreneurial development, content generation, meaning-making, strategic thinking, form-giving, project distribution, life-cycle planning, and policy creation.The Biennial's core argument is that since its origins, graphic design has combined the roles of both artistic and facilitator, and that this very hybridity comprises its contemporary value. The exhibition presents graphic design in familiar and unfamiliar formats, and the Biennial experiments with the discipline’s public role.
Ministry of Graphic Design is organized into several Departments, each representing a distinctive curatorial focus and format. These Departments include the Department of Graphic Optimism, Department of Dematerializing Language, Department of Non-Binaries, Department of Flying Saucers, and Department of Mapping Margins. Presenting objects, ideas, performances, installations, and more, the exhibition’s curatorial departments embrace a polyphonic and geographically-diverse approach to historical and contemporary practice.
Each Department shall explore and challenge graphic design’s key current topics, and will manifest itself through physical and virtual exhibitions, workshops, public programs, conference and more. The approach of investigation will be global as well as regional.
Through these means, the fictional ‘Ministry’ focuses on accomplishing 3 (three) goals:
—cataloguing and exhibiting graphic design work for extended study of regional and international contexts’
—commissioning current-day practitioners to workshop real-world problems and approach
—cultivating speculative design that project future problems and solution for the field
Neither comprehensive, conclusive, nor prescriptive, “Ministry of Graphic Design” creates a starting point for continued dialogue, research, and understanding within the field.
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Fikra is a design-led educational platform that comprises Fikra Campus—a co-working space, a café, a gallery, and a library—Fikra Design Studio, and Fikra Graphic Design Biennial
For more updates and information please visit the site of FIKRA
