Thesis: Perception, Reclamation, and the Witch
— UI DESIGN
— PRINT DESIGN
— EXHIBITION DESIGN
For a long time, the term ‘witch’ was a form of patriarchal discursive control. Throughout visual history, the witch was an intentional male representation of the demonic feminine. Nowadays, there is a lingering legacy of negative associations of witchcraft and women, which has affected people’s perceptions of real modern-day witches.
By tracing the different witch depictions in film and media, and by analyzing this visual culture, this thesis unearths numerous visual weapons used to maintain negative witch stereotypes. This thesis collects various depictions of the witch trope and deconstructs these examples in order to uncover underlying structures of power. The main project of this thesis is a creation of information.
The capstone serves as an informative and educational tool, which allows for larger access to multiple sources surrounding this subject, and therefore greater awareness. Reel Witches is a dynamic, living archive of witches in media. This website functions as an evolving collection that aims to understand the origins of these stereotypes and trace their history by gathering articles from various sources.
The image of the witch as an old hag, the image of the sexualized or beautiful witch, the image of the broomstick, cauldron, and pointy hat, to name a few, perpetuate negative connotations of witchcraft, which the mass media never fails to exploit.
Pratt Shows: Design 2019
Pratt Shows: Design is the Institute’s annual exhibition of design work by seniors and postgraduates from the School of Design, School of Architecture, and School of Art.
For this exhibition, students were grouped according to their thesis topics. My theme was “Feminism and Empowerment”, along with 8 other students. Each student was given one panel to display their work, but we as a team decided to create one big panel (combining our nine) while using our collectively defined subcategories as a reference to construct our narrative. We designed a navigation panel, created visual guidelines for formatting and typography, and differentiated our individual work using a color tagging system.