‘Nawat’ - Graduation Project

GRADUATION PROJECT

MA - Graphic Design & Visual Communication

Lebanese University - Faculty of Fine Arts - 2017

collage DNA genetic identity ILLUSTRATION lebanon masters nucleus process Web

Nawat (Arabic for nucleus) is an organization that aims to Reshape and promote a new, collective Lebanese identity amongst the Lebanese youth, through a genetic experience.

The Problem

The literature on Lebanese multi-cultural identity often stresses on the irreconcilable division between sectarian groups and their biased interpretations of the Lebanese history, which are invented by each community to empower its political position in the country. In this context, it is important to challenge this popular notion of subcultural and sectarian belonging and reshape it into a collective and coherent national identity built upon identification of similarities rather than differences. Finding similarities between Lebanese people is very difficult, to say the Least. Not only do they differ from one religion to another, but also from village to village, from city to city, and from family to family; each person has a different background coming from the rich history of the country which was ruled and inhabited by a huge number of civilizations years after years. Each generation and each of these civilizations left us a legacy, which was transformed and mixed over time to form the Lebanese people themselves, as we know them today.

The Solution

From this point, instead of searching for the similarities, I decided to benefit from all this richness of the Lebanese identity to point out that Lebanese people are similar in their rich genetic makeup. All those different genetic imprints we carry in ourselves is what makes us, in fact, Lebanese. We carry the same genetic experience in different proportions.

Mapping the project

The Concept

The National Geographic already started a project called the Genographic project in 2005. Their aim was to collect the genetic composition of each country in the world including Lebanon, which was under the supervision of Dr. Pierre Zalloua at the Lebanese American University, and from which the concept of Nawat was born.

I saw it as a layered circle (a cell) in which the Lebanese people need to move from the fractured periphery (which represents the differences, sectarian identities, etc…) closer to the core, or the nucleus (which represents the true self, the Lebanese genetic identity, the similarities) by passing through the layers of their ancestral DNA (discovering and experiencing the Lebanese genetic historical narratives).

The idea here, is to create a center where people can:

- Experience, test, and discover their genetic identity to see how rich their inner self can be, and to compare their results with each other.

- Understand how they can use this genetic and historical DATA to help and connect to each other on many levels (social/medical/cultural) through a digital platform and eventually face to face, as one nation holding the same collective identity.