Rasm: Contemporary Arabic Typographic Posters 2008-2018/ الملصقات التيبوغرافية العربية المعاصرة

Venue: 1971 Design Space, Flag Island, Sharjah. Date: Nov 2018. Curators: Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFares, Khatt Foundation. RASM is a celebration of the creative development of Arabic’s graphic and typographic design in the twenty-first century. It presents the work of a select group of designers from the Middle East, produced since the launch of the Khatt Foundation’s design community. This poster exhibition presents for the first time in the UAE a compilation of the past decade of the best Arabic Typographic posters. It also features two newly commissioned typographic installations by UAE-based designers: Abjad Design (Sheikha Bin Dhaher and Diana Hawatmeh) and Ranim Al Halaky. The installations explore a spatial and mixed media experience of visual and audible text and lettering. Arabic lettering and texts have adorned the facades of buildings since the seventh century and have played a role of both ornament and communication. They communicated on both the textual as well as the visual level; they were simultaneously narrative and visually expressive cultural identifiers. Landscapes and images are painted with words, letters become a visual expression of sounds and feelings, and calligraphy and lettering strive to visualize the emotional and invisible.

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