Prior to arriving at the MFA thesis project outcomes, I conducted a series of preliminary explorations to investigate the walls and barriers of occupied Palestine from different perspectives. The investigations mainly address the weaponized architecture in relation to smooth and striated space, focusing on notions of connection and division as well as reoccurring themes from people’s macro and micro experiences, such as dehumanization and humiliation, anxiety and intimidation, and anger and frustration. The explorations either manipulate the existing structures or are extensions to them. Projects that manipulate existing structures envision fictional scenarios in which they can be critically subverted and reinterpreted. Proposals that are extensions to the existing take a less speculative approach and begin to imagine more practical, yet metaphorical and poetic propositions that attach to the existing structures. Both approaches informed the outcomes of my MFA thesis in various ways. It is through these diverse investigations that I developed key themes and concepts that were threaded into the final design propositions.
Full thesis publication can be downloaded through this link: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/5868/
