Forough Abadian
Ports of Entry
Ports of entry are places where one may lawfully enter a country by crossing land and sea borders. This thesis frames the space conceptually where the boundaries of place, time, culture, and identity are crossed through existing ports or by building new ones.
As an Iranian immigrant in the United States, displacement of identity informs my worldview and design practice. I find myself between two worlds, one inherited and the other adopted. Both worlds are simultaneously active and exert their forces on my thought process. However, their interrelated dynamic is ambivalent because their path intersects and diverges unforeseeably. My position, like a pendulum, never settles within this dual dynamic. It sways from one direction to another—re-approaching one world after distancing itself from the other. This instability manifests in my design with forms that move, multiply, shift in scale, and are assembled and disassembled rapidly.
In my work, events serve as ports of entry to new territories. Events reveal the identity of a place, allowing me to relate to it on my own terms and to arrive at a space of belonging. I navigate the trajectory of the events because it reveals how the past informs our present condition. I collect fragments of evidence, present or lost, real or fictional, past or present, to tell contextual narratives about space, site, matter, and time.
Image
Signs & Signifiers of Change
Broadsheet Magazine
760mm x 578mm
2021
Street signs as small architectural objects and town squares as large urban spaces reflect subtle and monumental changes in how history is remembered and collective identity is formed. Historical events create a contextual image of a city and shape public memory. This printed publication uses the street signs and the town squares of Tehran, the capital of Iran, as a vantage point to understand the relationship between evidence and public memory.
Image
Signs & Signifiers of Change
Broadsheet Magazine
760mm x 578mm
2021
Street signs as small architectural objects and town squares as large urban spaces reflect subtle and monumental changes in how history is remembered and collective identity is formed. Historical events create a contextual image of a city and shape public memory. This printed publication uses the street signs and the town squares of Tehran, the capital of Iran, as a vantage point to understand the relationship between evidence and public memory.
Image
A Self-initiated Archive
Printed Vellum and Cardstock Folder
11.5 x 18 inch
2021
A self-made visual archive of street names changed in the past fifty years. The sign with the blue and white background is a pre-revolution design, and the sign with solid blue background is from post-revolution. Each folder contains the present and past signs of a single location printed on a vellum sheet. The images were entirely constructed digitally and are meant to look like hyper-realistic documentation.
Image
Signs & Signifiers of Change
Digital
2021
Street signs as small architectural objects and town squares as large urban spaces reflect subtle and monumental changes in how history is remembered and collective identity is formed. Historical events create a contextual image of a city and shape public memory. This printed publication uses the street signs and the town squares of Tehran, the capital of Iran, as a vantage point to understand the relationship between evidence and public memory.
Image
Signs & Signifiers of Change
Installation
2021
The works on display show arrays of visual studies for this project, including the printed publication in the magazine and poster format, physical street signs, the fictional archive, and the spray paint experiments.
Image
Diagrams of Power (The Chamber of the United States House of Representatives)
Digital
2020
This project explores the hierarchical dynamic of highly organized assemblies and represents the visible or the alluded leading figure in the center and its followers on the periphery.
Image
Diagrams of Power (The Chamber of the United States House of Representatives)
Digital
2020
This project explores the hierarchical dynamic of highly organized assemblies and represents the visible or the alluded leading figure in the center and its followers on the periphery.
Image
Diagrams of Power (New York Stock Exchange pit)
Digital
2020
This project explores the hierarchical dynamic of highly organized assemblies and represents the visible or the alluded leading figure in the center and its followers on the periphery.
Image
Diagrams of Power (New York Stock Exchange pit)
Digital
2020
This project explores the hierarchical dynamic of highly organized assemblies and represents the visible or the alluded leading figure in the center and its followers on the periphery.
Image
Diagrams of Power
Printed Installation
2020
This project explores the hierarchical dynamic of highly organized assemblies and represents the visible or the alluded leading figure in the center and its followers on the periphery.
- Architecture
- Ceramics
- Design Engineering
- Digital + Media
- Furniture Design
- Global Arts and Cultures
- Glass
- Graphic Design
- Industrial Design
- Interior Architecture
- Jewelry + Metalsmithing
- Landscape Architecture
- Nature-Culture-Sustainability Studies
- Painting
- Photography
- Printmaking
- Sculpture
- TLAD
- Textiles
