- Zarina (1999) Home is a Foreign place [Portfolio of 36 woodcuts]. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Available at: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/499720 (Accessed: 30 April 2025)
Zarina’s Home Is a Foreign Place is a series of 36 woodcut prints combining minimalist visuals with Urdu words to evoke memory, displacement, and belonging. Drawing on her personal history and global movements, the series weaves cultural, linguistic, and material references into a poignant meditation on home and identity. This selection of woodcuts inspired me to consider how graphic shapes can relate and represent feelings of displacement and of longing towards a home that never was, emphasizing that abstraction and simplicity can carry profound meaning. Her representations inspired my choice in my iterations to apply graphic romanian-inspired symbols to the original prints to create the layered effects.
2. Space One Eleven (2015) Negotiated Identities/Saints and Tears [Exhibition]. Birmingham, AL: Space One Eleven. Available at: https://spaceoneeleven.org/exhibition-archive/negotiated-identities-saints-and-tears/ (Accessed: 1 May 2025).
Negotiated Identities/Saints and Tears is a 2015 international group exhibition held at Space One Eleven in Birmingham, Alabama, featuring artists from the American Deep South and Romania. The exhibition explores how personal and collective identities are shaped by political histories, cultural memory, and religious symbolism. Romanian artists, navigating post-communist realities, and American artists from the Deep South, confronting their own socio-political landscapes, engage in a visual dialogue. Through collaborative works, the exhibition delves into themes of autonomy, privacy, and the enduring impact of authoritarian regimes, highlighting the universal quest for self-definition amid complex historical contexts. Within this exhibition I was struck by the work of Karen Graffeo who’s use of graphic symbols overlaid on old romanian imagery inspired my subsequent iterations in this project.
3. Benjamin, W. (1969) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, pp. 1–26. (First published in 1935).
The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web.
In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin argues that mass reproduction technologies, like photography and film, strip art of its “aura”—its uniqueness and presence in time and space. This shift transforms how art is experienced, detaching it from tradition and ritual. While reproduction democratizes access, it also opens art to political manipulation. Benjamin explores how these changes reflect broader shifts in perception, politics, and cultural production. While this choice approaches more broader subject matter, I still found it fundamental in guiding my reflection upon the medium I have chosen. While not entirely political, my piece relies on the handmade aspect of it’s production to reflect and represent my feelings.
4. McLuhan, M. and Fiore, Q., 1967. The medium is the massage: an inventory of effects [PDF]. New York: Bantam Books. Available at: https://archive.org/details/pdfy-vNiFct6b-L5ucJEa (Accessed: 1 May 2025)
The youth of today are not permitted to approach the traditional heritage of mankind through the door of technological awareness.
The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore explores how media shapes human perception and society. Through a mix of text and visuals, it argues that the medium through which a message is conveyed is more influential than the content itself. McLuhan shows how technologies like print, television, and electronic media reconfigure our senses, behaviors, and environments, ultimately reshaping culture and identity in profound, often unnoticed ways. My own perception of this work is ephemeral, oftentimes I get lost in the language, but I find it inspirational in the way it aims to shape and explain the concept of media and how it influences today’s society. This book reflects on my own thought process of developing this project.
5. Fowler, R. (2024) Boarding All Rows [Linoleum and Woodblock Prints]. Unknown. Available at: https://www.boardingallrows.com/blog/new-series-of-linoleum-and-woodblock-prints-2024 (Accessed: 1 May 2025).
Fowler does not provide a detailed explanation for the pieces created; rather, they serve as an exercise in lino printing. The work is particularly notable for its blend of lino and woodblock printing, combined with the use of different coloured inks. It is an experiment in layering ink, creating a visual effect reminiscent of decoupage. This approach inspired my own work, giving me the idea to layer symbols over my initial designs. While I originally intended to replicate the feeling of these overlaid, somewhat chaotic images, I realized that such complexity could make the compositions too busy and difficult to keep fast and light-footed, which was essential for my 100 iterations.
6. Ford, L. O. (2011) Savage Messiah. London: Verso Books.
Savage Messiah by Laura Oldfield Ford is a zine-style, psychogeographic exploration of post-industrial London. Blending collage, drawing, and text, the work captures the emotional residue of urban decay, gentrification, and working-class displacement. It documents forgotten spaces and resistances, channeling punk aesthetics and radical politics. Through layered visuals and fragmented narratives, Ford evokes both rage and nostalgia, offering a haunting portrait of a city transformed by neoliberalism and erased histories. Inspired by Ford’s expression of individuality, I wanted to also use text and words at points to establish my feelings in regards to my identity. The layering of her images solidified my desire to add the collage style spin towards my second rounds of iterations.
At its core, my enquiry is straightforward: I seek to understand what this part of my identity—being a Romanian immigrant—truly means to me, and how I can express it visually through a graphic project. I chose lino printing as my method of exploration, as it offered a tactile and expressive medium that felt both accessible and unfamiliar. This process pushed me to reflect inward, which is something I’ve often avoided in my creative practice, either due to my own shyness or due to insecurity in myself. Previously, I focused on representing others, their experiences and stories, often leaving my own identity as a subtle, almost invisible footnote within my work.
Text was reworded at points and gramatically corrected through AI