Ghada Da

MATERIA presents a site-specific portfolio consisting of six handmade paper sheets. I formed these pieces from the white shirt I wore while exploring glass in RISD’s Glass Department hot shop. I bought this shirt specifically for the program two years ago, and like glass itself, the shirt became a performative object, one that framed a specific site and attunement with the body. Together these sheets form a chronological sequence, documenting a set of processes and an evolving multi-disciplinary practice.

As I revisit this experience through a reflective process of return, I invite a new reading for these sheets, both individually and collectively. In doing so, the materials featured in this portfolio become a portrait of interiorities—an open body, layered with the tissue of an education.

Spaces inhabit our bodies at different depths, and materials help orient our placement within these spaces. Beyond the necessity of words, I navigate the world through co-creative explorations.

Materials matter because we are matter.

This thesis has been cut in half. I kept one of the halves

                   and the other has been delivered to the Fleet Library’s Special Collections.

www.ghadada.com