Join March Resident Savithri Valega in the Classroom for a Workshop exploring Heraldry and the questions: “What would your family crest look like if your legacy started now? What symbols have shaped you? How can they be composed alongside ubiquitous tech logos and anonymous clip art?”
Heraldry celebrates a continued (usually European) patriarchal lineage, unbroken by the culture of another. It doesn’t account for immigration or displacement. For those that leave their home countries, they leave behind not only their lifestyles and possessions, but also their heirlooms and other emblems of familial legacy. The new legacy must therefore regen- erate under new conditions.
The immigration process thus becomes the inciting incident for this new legacy. It is an opportunity to create new lore and an accompanying visual representation. Utilizing heraldic design practices codifies this new experience, which can be applied to moving across the country or simply starting a new life chapter.
The crests shown here were created in response to the prompt “What would your family crest look like if your legacy started now? What symbols have shaped you? How can they be composed alongside ubiquitous tech logos and anonymous clip art?”
Participants were asked to brainstorm 2 resonant symbols to add to a shared “charge bank” for everyone. From there, they arranged their crests, some of which are shown here. This exercise visually and conceptually flattens the sources of the images, deriving them from South Indian auto rickshaws, clip art, and classic heraldic design.
-@savi.factory