Honoring lives lost and comforting those who mourn

Shine a Light Alabama is a community-based effort of remembrance, resilience, and healing from losses experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. To create the branding of this public health campaign, I collaborated with a local nonprofit and facilitated co-design sessions with Alabamians. The resource guide is a tool to help communities unite around the effort to honor lives lost and comfort those who mourn. It is available in English, Spanish, and Korean, the three most commonly spoken languages in the state of Alabama. Over 4,000 tote bags bearing the Shine a Light Alabama logo were created by local businesses and distributed across the state.

Collaborators
Alabama Forward

Using Human-centered design to reimagine the social service ecosystem of Houston

Build With Us is the culmination of over a year’s worth of research, fieldwork, and conversations focused on Harris County residents impacted by COVID-19. Doing this type of research and deep listening at the height of the pandemic has allowed Connective Houston and its partners to elevate the voices of residents, prioritize their experience, and adjust resources in real time to respond to the growing and changing needs of community members. I collaborated with strategists and other creatives to art-direct, design, and oversee production of a 128-page report and the UX/UI. 

Collaborators
Connective Houston, fahad punjwani, Shirley Hernandez

Shapeless Shapes

A fairy tale, a history book, a call to action to shape our future

Shapeless Shapes is a collaborative arts and advocacy project with human rights lawyer Amal de Chickera. It challenges narratives and highlights activism around the instrumentalization of citizenship. It is a graphic novel about identity, belonging, history, freedom, discrimination, injustice, activism and statelessness. This graphic novel explains this complex human rights issue as never before, and it has taken new-found relevance in our COVID-19 world. This book seeks to untangle the complex legal, historical, and political forces that create and justify state-sanctioned exclusion and mobilize the public on this issue.

Publisher
Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion
Watch book launch webinar
Purchase / Digital Download

Unearthing the truth of convict leasing, a project funded by Soros Equality fellowship

During the 18-month-long Soros Equality Fellowship, I researched, art-directed, and implemented multiple visual communication media for telling the history of convict leasing and the story of Sugar Land 95, the 95 African-American individuals unearthed during a construction in Sugar Land, Texas. This effort included a rebrand of a local nonprofit organization, UX/UI design, report, graphic narratives, video, and numerous writings and speaking engagements. (Event photo: Julia Zhogina Photography)

Publication

• Convict Leasing and Labor Project
• Monument Lab
• Houston Chronicle
• Harvard Graduate School of Design
• National Trust for Historic Preservation Leadership Forum

Lecture

• University of Southern California
• Rice University
• University of Texas at Austin
• Hutchines Center for African and African American Research

Envisioning an alternative future where justice is restored to stateless people in the U.S.

U.S. Citizenship Initiative for the Stateless (USCIS) is a visionary agency that aims to break fear, apathy, and the bureaucratic deadlock that perpetuates the invisibility of stateless people. This imaginary office co-opts and reimagines the legal and visual language of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Collaborating with United Stateless, a grassroots organization led by stateless people living in America, USCIS advocates on behalf of stateless people in the U.S. through forms, travel documents, posters, and media activism. Developed as Harvard GSD Thesis project

Advisors, Harvard GSD
Malkit Shoshan, Krzysztof Wodiczko