[2024]

Felt, dimensions variable

Flocking is a multifunctional installation that transforms the exhibition space into a cultural sanctuary. Inspired by the geometric motifs of Islamic art, the piece consists of modular felt components that can be arranged to accommodate both religious and secular functions. Visitors are invited to remove their shoes and wear the provided slippers, allowing them to experience the exhibition from a different perspective. The slippers, personalized with pompoms made by CARITAS, a humanitarian organization and social enterprise, symbolize the act of entering a special, sacred space. By engaging with the installation, visitors become active participants in creating a shared sense of belonging and unity within the exhibition space. Flocking explores the idea of a sanctuary as a place of inclusion, contemplation, and social connection, while also highlighting the importance of sustainable materials and local craftsmanship in the creation of meaningful art experiences.

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Concept and design: Azra Akšamija

Research and design development: Ganit Goldstein, Lillian Kology, Penelope Phylactopoulos, Qingyang Xie

Production: Ideal Felt

[2024]

Installation, anaglyph cardboard glasses, dimensions variable

This installation transforms ordinary anaglyph 3D glasses into stained-glass-like windows. By repurposing these familiar consumer items, the project explores the intersection of the mundane and the divine, inviting viewers to perceive the sacred in unexpected places. The large, intricately designed windows are constructed entirely from carefully arranged ready-made anaglyph glasses. The red and blue lenses create an interplay of color and light, mimicking the luminous quality of traditional stained glass. The structure incorporates elements of Gothic and Islamic patterns, allowing for diverse interpretations. The project challenges viewers to reconsider their perceptions of the ordinary and find beauty in the most unlikely of materials. Referencing Guy Debord's "Society of the Spectacle," it invites audiences to engage with questions of spirituality, consumerism, and the role of art in shaping our understanding of the world.

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Project commissioned by Kunsthaus Graz for the exhibition Sanctuary. 

Concept and design: Azra Akšamija 

Research and fabrication: Ghida Anouti (fabrication lead), Angelica Zhuang (prototypes), Penelope Phylactopoulos (2D drawings) 

Wearable architecture, recycled felt, dimensions variable

Inspired by the nomadic Bisht cloak, Bishty is a modular textile system that represents adaptable textile shelters for climate resilience The wearable "Bishty" cloaks emulate the protective function of the traditional Bisht, blending nomadic architectural intelligence and contemporary design to facilitate climate adaptation. The modular textile system can be assembled into a larger canopy that transforms from shading structures to intimate social spaces, drawing on the collective knowledge of nomadic tribes and refugee communities. The felt fabric, made from discarded materials, optimizes thermal properties for climate resilience. By upcycling waste and integrating traditional knowledge, Bishty points towards a future where natural, artificial, and collective forms of intelligence converge to address the climate crisis and related issues of conflict, displacement, and environmental healing.

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Artistic director: Azra Akšamija 

Project research and development: Future Heritage Lab (Merve Akdoğan, Lillian Kology, Yi-Ern Samuel Tan, Nadine Zaza) 

Bishty fabrication: Azra Akšamija, Ganit Goldstein

Model: Yi-Ern Samuel Tan

The "Abundance & Scarcity" project, presented at the Diriyah Biennale 2024, links environmental sustainability with cultural heritage into a cultural shelter on two scales: a social shelter in form of an outdoor shading canopy and a personal shelter in form of a "Bishty" wearable. The project embodies an artistic approach to addressing the extremes of desert climates while honoring the traditions of nomadic cultures, including those of Saudi Arabian tribes and contemporary nomads and refugees. The 70-meter-large outdoor canopy, situated on an outdoor area of the Biennale, is crafted from recycled felt used as architectural upholstery of the previous Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah. Based on the dimensions of the Saudi Arabian Bisht, a traditional cloak made from goat wool and camel hair, this modular textile system forms a shading structure that is both functional and visually captivating. The canopy's design, featuring laser-cut patterns, plays with light and shadow to create a dynamic visual effect reminiscent of Sadu weaving. This effect is enhanced by the gentle sway of the fabrics in the desert wind. This structure is not only a nod to the ingenious constructions of nomadic shelters but also incorporates sewn-in sachets of native desert plants, adding a layer of sensory experience through their refreshing scents.

The second component, "Bishty," extends the project's reuse of textiles into wearable art. Drawing from the same modular principle as the canopy, "Bishty" is a cocoon-like cloak that translates the traditional Bisht into a unisex wearable lined with refugee blankets. Both the canopy and "Bishty" highlight the theme of "Abundance & Scarcity" through the selection of materials and the integration of environmental and social considerations. The use of recycled felt and refugee blankets underscores a commitment to environmental sustainability, reflecting on the broader implications of resource utilization and cultural resilience. Following the Biennale, the project aims to continue its social mission by donating surplus materials to refugee camps and selling wearable items to fund further implementation efforts within these communities.

Click here for order inquiries for the BISHTY.

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Materials: Recycled polyester felt from the 2023 Islamic Art Biennale in Jeddah, refugee fleece blankets.

Dimensions: variable.

CREDITS:

Artistic director: Azra Akšamija

Project research and development: Future Heritage Lab (Merve Akdoğan, Lillian Kology, Yi-Ern Samuel Tan, Nadine Zaza)

Outdoor canopy fabrication: Diriyah Biennale team

Bishty fabrication: Azra Akšamija, Lillian Kology

Project text: written by Azra Akšamija and edited with AI

Exhibition website: https://biennale.org.sa/en

[2024]

Used T-shirts, wooden construction, 1,2 x 1,2 x 6m

Coring is a textile art installation that critiques the global consumerist economy and its impact on the Earth as a sanctuary. Through the stacked T-shirts resembling core samples, the project explores the textile industry's role as one of the most lucrative and polluting industries today, with over 80 billion square meters of leftover garments ending up in landfills or being destroyed by burning. The installation highlights the widespread phenomenon of fast fashion and the parallel economy of stock destruction used to ensure price control when demand is not met. By using the notion of "coring" as both a medium and a framework to examine the cultural, social, political, economic, and environmental footprint of clothing, the project served as a critical response to the world's pressing environmental concerns, emphasizing the importance of preserving the Earth as a sanctuary for all.
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Concept and design: Azra Akšamija

Research and design development: Kailin Jones, Lillian Kology 

Production: Emma Harden, Lillian Kology, Becky Sellinger

This immersive installation was developed for the “Sanctuary” exhibition at the Aga Khan Museum Toronto. The exhibition explores the notion of the safe haven, featuring 36 carpets created by notable international artists, including Mona Hatoum and Brendan Fernandes. Our immersive installation spans the entire gallery space, deploying thousands of shredded T-shirts, which were turned into loom-like spatial dividers. The exhibition architecture weaves the artists’ perspectives with the consumerist economy in which we participate and exist. The stainless-steel loom beams conjure images of retail warehouses and mass waste. The warp and the weft, made of shredded T-shirts, point at the fast-fashion overstock awaiting destruction at the end of the season. This second-life-themed exhibition architecture probes the social value of our waste: All exhibition materials will be recycled after the exhibition and made into carpets as sofreh (food offering). They will be gifted to new immigrants of Canada as portable “living rooms,” to welcome their arrival to a new homeland. The material narratives of sustainability yarn a perspective on the notion of the Sanctuary: to become less indifferent to the social costs of maintaining our lifestyles means to become more open to the voices of others, not as a negotiating technique, but as an indispensable part of our plant’s chorus.

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Materials: Over 2,000 shredded cotton T-shirts, stainless-steel beams. Dimensions: variable.

CREDITS:

Exhibition curators: Cheryl Haines, FOR-SITE Foundation and Michael Chagnon, Aga Khan Museum

Exhibition design: Future Heritage Lab

Artistic director: Azra Akšamija

R&D team: Natalie Bellefleur, Lillian Kology

Exhibition website: https://agakhanmuseum.org/exhibitions/sanctuary

Exhibition photos: Toni Hafkenscheid ©Aga Khan Museum, 2020.

Process Drawing: Future Heritage Lab

Artistic director: Azra Akšamija

R&D team: Natalie Bellefleur, Stratton Coffman, Isadora Simone Stahl Dannin, Emily Jane Wissemann

Production: AKM team

Al Azraq Camp Photographs: Future Heritage Lab (FHL)

Principal Investigator and artistic director: Azra Akšamija

Research team: Zeid Madi, Melina Philippou

Photos by: Zeid Madi and Nabil Sayfayn (FHL) and Al Azraq Journal team: Hussein Al-Abdallah, Yassin Al-Yassin, Mohammad Al-Qo’airy, Mohammad Al-Mez’al, 2017.

Augmented reality: Melina Philippou (FHL), Cagri Zaman and Nikolaos Vivianos (MIT Virtual Experience Design Lab)

This drawing explores the world through the lens of a cotton T-shirt, depicting three parallel narratives. The first story (green) traces the environmental footprint of T-shirts through the resources and the pollution that are part of its manufacturing process. The second plot (blue) examines the technologies of the T-Shirt production, from the cultivation of the cotton plant and the associated history of slavery to the industrialized fabrication, distribution, and revenues of today’s surplus economy. The third narrative (red) traces the social impact of T-shirts, juxtaposing the global mobility of consumer goods with the limitations on human mobility, pointing at the labor exploitation in textile sweatshops and the societal polarization over wearables of immigrants and refugees. These superimposed narratives disassemble and reassemble the statistics and facts, speculating their impact on people and the environment to better understand and reimagine the world we live in today.

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The drawing was produced for the exhibition “Sanctuary” at the Aga Khan Museum Toronto, to provide a conceptual commentary on the exhibition architecture (see Sanctuary Looms), but it can stand on its own as an independent artwork.

Materials: Print on recycled paper. Dimensions: 18m x 1,8m (60 x 6 ft)

CREDITS:

Artistic direction: Azra Akšamija

Research and design team: Natalie Bellefleur, Stratton Coffman, Isadora Simone Stahl Dannin, Emily Jane Wissemann

Exhibition photographs: Toni Hafkenscheid ©Aga Khan Museum, 2020.

Textile System for Experimental Research in Alternative Impact

The T-Serai is a portable palace for transcultural futures. Inspired by textile histories of the MENA region, the project involves participatory creation of modular tapestries made of recycled clothes. The tapestries can be used to personalise the standardised refugee shelters (T-Shelters), facilitating mobile storage and vertical gardening. They can also be used to set up tents for storytelling and other social gatherings animated through multi-sensory experiences. The different versions T-Serai tents are produced through creative collaborations across borders, involving diverse groups: from Syrian refugees in Jordan, to students in the USA, UAE, and Europe. Through the design of motifs, participants can record their personal stories. The multidirectional knowledge exchange between participants of different generations and backgrounds offers a possibility for connecting at the time of growing divides.

One T-Serai prototype is touring for exhibitions, pointing at the social and environmental cost of our consumer lifestyle. Another T-Serai prototype is commissioned in refugee camps in Jordan, probing a culturally sensitive approach to humanitarian intervention. Through the use of recycled clothes, the project explores how the surplus of global textile industry could benefit social revitalisation of threatened communities. Educational and creative workshops in refugee camps offer means for self-expression and self-determination, thereby also supporting the preservation of the refugees’ living culture. Through the deployment of tapestries in T-Shelters, individuals can influence and appropriate standardised solutions of humanitarian architecture to enact civic life. In so doing, the T-Serai challenges the economy and life as bios approach of the established humanitarian aid system by proposing a new paradigm: to position culture is an essential human need, vital actor of cultural resilience at times of conflict and crisis.
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Media: Tent installation, 9 Ottoman poufs, discarded clothes, tapestry prototypes.

CREDITS:

Concept and artistic direction: Azra Aksamija.

Research team: Azra Aksamija, Natalie Bellefleur, Lillian Kology, Zeid Madi, Melina Philippou.  

Prototype development: Azra Aksamija, Natalie Bellefleur, Lillian Kology.

Heat transfer studies: Natalie Bellefleur, Johnathan Kongoletos.

Fabrication: Azra Aksamija, Lyza Baum, Natalie Bellefleur, Joseph Burnhoe, Lillian Kology, Graham Yaeger.

T-Serai designs produced within Azra Aksamija’s course “Foundations in the Arts, Design, and Spatial Practices,” MIT Department of Architecture, Spring 2019 include: Cherie Miot Abbanat CI Component Instructor),  Jaya Eyzaguirre and Yaara Yacoby (Teaching Assistants); Students: Zidane Abubakar, Lisbeth Acevedo Ogando, Erika Anderson, Alexander Boccon-Gibod, Landon Buckland, Jierui Fang, Alejandro Gonzalez-Placito, Alice Ho, Effie Jia, Seo Yeon Kwak, Daniel Landez, Christopher Larry, Yi Yang, Annie Zhang.

T-Serai Workshop at the American University of Sharjah produced in collaboration with Alya Alzaabi, Rebecca Beamer, Isabela Marchi Tavares De Melo.

T-Serai Workshops in Al Za’atari and Al Azraq Refugee Camps in Jordan conducted in collaboration with the Norwegian Refugee Council and CARE-Jordan.

Special thanks to: Ulrike Al-Khamis, Aksamija family, Zlatan Filipovic, Raafat Majzoub, Kevin McLellan, Dietmar Offenhuer

Institutional support: Sharjah Museums, the MIT School of Architecture and Planning.

The Diaspora Scroll is a growing textile book that deconstructs myths of nationalism and local traditions through the embroidery patterns, which depict personal histories of migration, and creation process, which facilitates transcultural exchange. The project takes the form through the sourcing, analyzing of textile art, design and techniques around the world, as well as through collaborative embroidery. Collaborating textile artists are invited to contribute to the project by sharing their perspectives, skills and insights. The installation creates a deconstruction of local national myths through historical embroidery loaned from local museums, as well as sound bites featuring various perspectives of textile historians, restaurateurs, and craftswomen.

Textiles represent the iconographic and ornamental expressions of their respective civilizations. Due to their portability, they also represent the geographic and historical paths by which the techniques and design employed in their creation have traveled from one civilization to another through time. The Diaspora Scroll project employs textile art as a resource to understand the historical cross-pollination between cultures and as a mode for creating cultural hybridity. In a world characterized by the rise of divisions over culture, class and identity, a better understanding of cultural fluidity is aimed at countering nationalism and fostering a dialogue across borders.

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Media: Installation, Sound, Table cloth with 4 digital animations (a 4min.) and 8 analog embrodiery stations.

CREDITS:

Concept and artistic direction by Azra Aksamija.

Project research team: Joshua Jest, Lillian Kology, Melina Philippou. 

Installation design: James Addison, Azra Aksamija.

Pattern and animation design: Azra Aksamija.

Pattern production: Blanca Abramek, James Addison, Natalie Bellefleur, Stephanie Lee, Calvin Zhong.

Animation production: James Addison, Calvin Zhong.

Hand embroidery: Sajra Burnić, Barbara Edlinger, Barbara Ertl-Leitgeb, Ingrid Frühwirth, Sophia Giordano, Alan Kakja, Lillian Kology, Christine Ruß.

Sound-bites: Roswitha Orac-Stipberger, Munira Aksamija.

Thanks to: Emma De Ro and the team of Kunsthaus Graz.

The Lightweaver is a kinetic lighting sculpture, which was developed as a co-creation with the artists, engineers, and inventors from Boston, Amman, and the Al Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan. The project represents both, a poetic and utilitarian response to everyday life problems in the refugee camp: it addresses the visual austerity of shelters through the design of lamps that function as an educational tool and means for cultural preservation and individual expression. The device employs light and a DIY pinwheel-driven machine to animate stories designed by their creators through a three-dimensional light weaving. The device can be used to personalize the interior spaces of the refugee camp shelters.  The Lightweaver translates stories from textiles and calligraphy into a sensory play of light, aiming to preserve cultural memory and inspire hope.

The cross-disciplinary course developed around this project includes lessons in cultural history, textile weaving, calligraphy, basics of mechanical and electrical engineering. The course is investigating the role of art, design, and technology as a means for the sensory enrichment of the refugee shelters and as a medium to dignify stateless people within conditions of limited resources, war and trauma. The Lightweaver proposes a way of rethinking the shelter beyond its functionality as a physical protection: by creating immersive cultural environments within refugee camps, the project aims to provide means for psycho-social aid, cultural preservation, job creation and education through play and knowledge exchange across borders.
 

Click here to see a 15min. presentation about the Lightweaver project.

Click here to see a 5min. video of Al Azraq camp residents reflecting on the Lightweaver project. 

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CREDITS:

Concept by Azra Aksamija.

Phase I prototypes developed by: Azra Aksamija, Allison James, Joshua Jest, Lillian Kology, Xinyi Ma, Melina Philippou. 

Phase II prototypes developed and documented in Al Azraq camp by: Azra Aksamija, Hussain Al-Abdullah, Hatem Al-Balkhy, Omar Al-Darwish, Mo’ayad Al-Eid, Wa’el Al-Faraj, Sufyan Al-Ghoutany, Nasina Haidar Al-Mansour, Jar Al-Naby Abazaid, Mohammad Assaf, Jehad Assaf, Mohammad Ghassan, Mustafa Hamadah, Hanaa Hasan, Rawan Hussein, Abdulkarim Ihsan, Ahmad Khalaf, Lillian Kology, Zeid Madi, Manisha Mohan, Nabil Sayfayn, with the support of CARE Jordan. Documentation by Al Azraq Journal team: Hussain Al-Abdullah, Jamil Hameidy, Yassin Al-Yassin, Mohammad Al-Qo’airy, Mohammad Al-Mez’al.

Phase III prototypes developed and documented by: Lisbeth Acevedo Ogando, Azra Aksamija, Seth Avecilla, Lily Bailey, Pedro Cardoso Zylbersztajn, Baian Chen, Gabriel Fields, Beatriz Gonzalez, Kevin Gonzales, Marlo Johnson, Lillian Kology, Shannon Miller, Ankita Reddy, Pooja Reddy, Rikhav Shah.

Phase IV prototypes will be developed at GJU with Al Azraq camp residents and GJU students, along with Omar Al-Darwish and Zeid Madi.

Project video filmed by Al Azraq journal team: Hussain Al-Abdullah, Jamil Hameidy, Yassin Al-Yassin, Mohammad Al-Qo’airy, Mohammad Al-Mez’al. Video 1 edited at MIT by: Zacharia Jama. Video 2 edited at GJU by: Zedi Madi, Zaid Qarout.

The project is produced with the generous support by: MIT Future Heritage Lab; CAST Mellon Faculty Grant; MIT Arab World Program; MISTI Global Seed Funds Program and CARE Jordan.

The Code of Ethics? is an online platform established by the Future Heritage Lab to investigate the ethics of cultural interventions in the humanitarian context. This platform offers a shared channel for dissemination of critical questions and ethical dilemmas across cultural and disciplinary borders. The questions are collected through workshops and input from refugees and practitioners in the fields of art, architecture, design, urban planning, historic preservation, social entrepreneurship, education, and technology.

For more information and to contribute, please visit: www.codeofethics.online

The Memory Matrix is an ephemeral monument aimed at preserving cultural memory in the context of war destruction. The project employs new fabrication techniques and multidisciplinary collaborations that result in site-specific temporary installations in public spaces. The Matrix is composed of twenty thousand fluorescent Plexiglas elements, or “pixels,” that depict vanished monuments across the world (Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, United States, Philippines, and beyond). These pixels are created through workshops in which participants sketch, discuss, digitize, and laser cut destroyed architecture of significance to their community. The larger matrix of pixels reveals an anamorphic image of a recently destroyed monument, made visible through movement of light and wind. Beyond its archival character, the project aims to advance and promote peaceful coexistence by enhancing an understanding of the world’s cultural heritage. To date, the project has traveled to Boston, Amman, Ramallah, Dallas, and Manila, engaging more than seven hundred participants.

Production 2016-2017. Previous collaborations: Cairo Maker Faire I International Art Academy Palestine, Amman Design Week, Syrian refugees in Jordan, London Biennale – Manila Pollination, ArtSciLab at UT Dallas.

CULTURUNNERS is an artistic expedition in search of empathy between cultures. International artists and curators are embarking on road trips to explore, communicate and archive interconnected cultural histories between the Middle East and the United States. Coauthored and initiated by Azra Akšamija and Stephen Stapleton – artists who have spent a decade traveling from UK over Yemen to Saudi Arabia, and from the Balkans over Central Europe to United States – CULTURUNNERS takes shape through physical journeys and artistic creations. The transformation of the CULTURUNNERS’ RV into a mobile studio was produced by Azra Akšamija. In October 2014, the MIT Program in Art , Culture and Technology hosted a three-day storytelling symposium, creative workshop, and exhibition at the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT). In March 2015, Akšamija curated the CULTURUNNERS exhibit at the Armory Show in New York as a special project. These events were produced in collaboration with Edge of Arabia and Art Jameel. Participants included international artists, designers, filmmakers, scientists, curators, and scholars who came together to share technologies and applications for transcultural exchange. Their practices inspire novel approaches toward cultural links specific to the United States and the Middle East. Today, the CULTURUNNERS continues as an independent platform for cultural production, hosting artists' travels, exhibitions, talks and exchanges across the Unites States.

Yarn·dez·vous is a wearable quilt featuring textiles from the MENA region and the United States. Hexagons and star-shaped modules of the quilt can be transformed into individual letterman’s jackets and vice versa: the jackets unzip flat into geometric elements that form the larger quilt. The name of the project is a hybrid of the words yarn and rendezvous. Yarn refers both to a thread used for making fabrics and to storytelling, whereas rendezvous refers to the encounter that the jackets of this project allow. Project participants were asked to bring textiles from the location of their residence, which were then combined with textiles from Boston as the base material for the jackets and the quilt. The project is in the state of an ongoing transformation and customization into increasing the quilt modules to more variations of culturally signifying clothes—such as tunics, kaftans, abayas, dresses, and shirts—inspired from the East and the West.

Produced 2014-2015. Collaborators: Culturunners,  Edge of Arabia & Art Jameel, Armory Show,  Kunsthalle Mulhouse

The Monument in Waiting is a carpet that depicts the collective testimony of the “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia-Herzegovina carried out by nationalist extremists during the war of 1992–95. The pattern of this handwoven kilim depicts stories about the systematic destruction of Islamic cultural heritage during the war, and it points at the transformation of the Bosniaks’ religious, ethnic, and national identities today as a result of the loss of cultural memory. The historical and archival research for this piece includes more than 250 mosques that were deliberately targeted by nationalist extremists. These data, as well as interviews with various individuals engaged in the current mosque building-and-rebuilding process, were visualized as kilim symbols. Locally found patterns and symbols were thereby converted into signifiers of political and military aggression that threatened collectivity, providing a multitude of perspectives. The carpet was woven by women who survived concentration camps, and the process of weaving represents a form of healing after trauma. Acknowledging that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has recognized the destruction of religious architecture as evidence of a targeted annihilation of Bosnian coexistence, this kilim is left unfinished so that more stories could be added toward a full recognition of the genocide with cultural means, in which case the piece would actualize its function as a monument.

Collaborators: Sarajevo Winter Festival, STILL-A Association for the Preservation of the Bosnian Kilim, Stroom The Hague, The Ismaili Center Toronto, Giorgio Cini Foundation Venice

The project Journeyman Years (Wanderjahre) speaks to cultural and political dimensions of labor migration focusing on the case of Turkish migrants in Germany. The construction helmet refers to the heavy labor of early Turkish migrant workers who were invited to Germany as gastarbeiters (guest workers) because of the acute labor shortage during the economic boom in the 1960s and 1970s. These migrant workers brought cultural traditions with them, as indicated by the sixteenth-century Iznik pottery decoration on the helmet. The choice of porcelain as the material for the helmet refers to changing cultural patterns over the course of history but also to the fragility of the expatriates’ migratory experience. Highlighting the migrant worker immigrants’ role as transmitters of cultural influences, knowledge, and skills, the project seeks to destabilize the misconstrued and essentialist perceptions of gastarbeiters’ identity, linking it to contemporary global politics of migrant labor and exploitation.

Collaborators:New Hamburg Gallery” in Hamburg Veddel by Adnan Softić, Deutsches SchauSpielHaus, Ceramic painting: Nurgün Yavuz. Production help: Mahir M. Yavuz. Ceramic Craftsman: Selim Yazıcı. Assistant Designer: Ayşegül Aras.

“Unity” is a textile structure based on Islamic muqarnas (stalactite-like decorative three-dimensional elements found in Islamic monuments). The structure was designed for the neo-Gothic archway, the entrance to the exhibition “Interior View South-East: Investigations of Islamic Spaces”  at the Architecture Forum Upper-Austria in Linz, Austria. The modular structure of the muqarnas has transformed and sewn together into a complex whole — unity of forms –that aims to signalize the need for a new aesthetic of “Islam in the West” characterized by a formal experimentation and enrichment though cultural interactions.

Collaborators: Designed by Azra Akšamija and Joel Lamere, Unity, 2012 and produced with a group of MIT undergraduate and graduate students and alumni: Juanita Ballesteros, Angela Chu, Daniela Covarrubias, Tara Ebsworth, Emily Tow, and Jegan Vincent de Paul. Other collaborators include Indira Adilović, Azra, Munira und Ibrahim Akšamija, Ewald Elmecker, Katharina Anna Loidl, with the generous support by the Council for the Arts at MIT.