as many of you know, i had been to london for a couple of months working on a collaborative residency project for the shubbak festival on contemporary arab culture. it was a great experience and am so happy to have been a part of such an awesome project. the project involved collaborating with london based art/design collective public works on creating an intervention based around the idea of shopping malls as social spaces. for the project, we were stationed in westfield shopping mall in london, gathering stories and narratives from the westfield community and their personal stories at the mall. after gathering enough stories (and meeting a whacky group of staff and shoppers in the process!), we started the next stage of the project, which was designing products for a dinner we'd organize, inviting all the people that generously contributed their stories. the title of the event was appropriately called 'feast' and the idea was to create unique products which would function well for a feast, but relate to the stories we gathered. each product would relate to a person/story from westfield.
even though we had a tight deadline to create all the components for the feast, i think we were successful with the results. our products ranged from the table, to all the cutlery, plates, chairs, napkins and anything you would need for a dinner. our only limitation was creating all these products using a small but extremely effective a4 laser cutter. although stressful at times, it was a brilliant challenge to take on.
the dinner was really successful, and it was great to see all the components come together. what i thoroughly enjoyed was seeing the reactions of the guests when we'd reveal the products that specifically related to each guest.
what i also enjoyed was the process of creating physical products. as i mainly work flat either on paper or digitally, it was a great shift moving into 3d and i learnt a lot. the best part was creating prototypes collectively and refining each design until we were all satisfied with the final product. working in 3d is definitely something i'll continue to use for upcoming projects.
i don't think i have the right words to describe how much i enjoyed this experience. but it was truly one of the best moments in my life (so far) and i will never forget it. i guess i should thank everyone who made this the best experience ever! so thank you delfina foundation for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this project, and a place i called home throughout the residency. Thank you salwa and the emirates foundation team for the support and sending me to london for the project. thank you public works, andreas, torange and polly, for being the best group to work with and inspiring me to do so much more with my talent. a special thank you goes out to aaron, for being the best host anyone in london can ask for. and lastly, a big thank you to my favorite city in the world, london, for making me have the best summer ever...
(lastly, a thank you goes out to Gregory Fonne and Gary Dickinson for their hard work in documenting the project and photographs) 
