Interior Atlas: Ways of Research

Oct 20

“Our forms of articulation are limited—we can only see and think through what’s possible with the language we have to articulate it. Once we expand on that language, we can produce entirely different worlds.” — Sumayya Vally, architect

In the process of writing a thesis, the worlds of visual thinking and making live in tandem. Connections emerge and are understood together through slowing evolving paths of dedicated research: speculative, experiential, experimental, formal, analytical, and critical. Research has no parameters for artists and designers; they continue to define them. The effort of this exhibition is to make the practice of inquiry visible by featuring the ‘thoughtscapes’ of nine RISD graduate thesis writers, 2021-2023.

Here we see the synergy of interior mapping as a constructive tool for opening up and sharpening new conversations and work. Poised between knowing and not knowing, these artists and designers have constructed often nonlinear paths of connection, with expansive links across historical, archival, oral, phenomenological, materials, and cultural sources. To inhabit these mental cosmologies is to find a diverse set of methodologies, with dynamic intersections of examination and intervention to birth a singular thesis idea.