By Abdi Ali
Published October 7, 2018
November 2018 shall midwife the birth of what is seen as a landmark event aimed at spurring innovation in graphic design, broadening public understanding of its scope, and rectifying the historic neglect of Arab design on the world stage.
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Conceived by a design agency and education platform known as Fikra, the Fikra Graphic Design Biennial 01 is expected to not only bring hundreds of global practitioners and design thinkers to Sharjah in United Arab Emirates (UAE) for a three-week programme of events and exhibitions designed to explore, challenge and reinvent our understanding of the purpose and meaning of graphic design in the 21st century but to also be the biggest graphic design event in the Middle East and North Africa.
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The inaugural edition of the multifaceted event has been named ‘Ministry of Graphic Design’ – a playful nod towards the forward-thinking administrative hierarchy of the UAE – and divided the ‘ministry’ into a series of ‘departments’, each looking at graphic design from a different perspective. They include the Ministry of Graphic Optimism (a UAE design retrospective), the Ministry of Non-Binaries (a cross-disciplinary exploration of blurring definitions and identities), and the Ministry of Flying Saucers (a series of shifting on-site residencies).
Though graphic design shapes and influences almost every communication in the world, we send or receive in our public lives, many people limit the role of graphic design to the representation of existing ideas, rather than their creation, development or disruption. It is perhaps to change this limited perspective that Fikra Graphic Design Biennial 01 is planned for November 9 – 30, 2018. The event sets out to re-evaluate everyday assumptions and challenge conventional views of graphic design, undertaking what the organisers term a bold and wide-ranging exploration of the discipline’s meaning, impact and changing purpose in the 21st century.
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The biennial is expected to serves as a global platform for Middle Eastern creative practitioners to participate in global design discourse, to nurture local and international collaboration, and to explore the evolving role of graphic design in an increasingly complex and culturally fragmented world.
Moreover, Fikra Graphic Design Biennial 01 will be the final event to take place in the city’s iconic Bank of Sharjah building on Bank Street, built at the height of Arab modernism in the 1970s, but now set to be demolished to make way for the Heart of Sharjah restoration project.
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“I think we are at an exciting time with graphic design – the lines between different disciplines are becoming so blurred, the question of who graphic designers are, what they can do, how they ‘design’, and who they design for are increasingly worth reviewing. I would like to think of the Biennial as ‘un-defining’ graphic design, challenging preconceived ideas of the discipline and providing an unexpectedly broad array of graphic design works, concepts, and initiatives,” says Salem Al-Qassimi, Founder and Director of Fikra Graphic Design Biennial.
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