A Settler’s Land Acknowledgement - Public Space is Colonized Space

As a settler and student of decolonization, I made this project as an exercise in rhetorically destabilizing the notion of the “public" as a colonial affectation that pre­supposes safety and comfort for settlers, while being built upon ­conquest and displacement. As a graphic designer and educator, my intent is to explore the extent to which words and claims matter, and to indict visualization and inscription as instruments of colonial/ism/ity.

The project started as a reflection on the occluded relationship between The Bentway and Fort York, in Tkaronto. It is a working acknowledgement whose main ambition is to frame as contingent and contestable that which is thought to be natural and established: To charge the coloniality of notions like the “public” as violent and perhaps apocalyptic, and to pro­voke both critical reflection and defection amongst the bene­ficiaries of settler colonialism.

Chris Lee

Chris Lee is a graphic designer and educator based in Brooklyn, NY, where he is an Assistant Professor at the Pratt Institute in the Undergraduate Communications Design Department. He graduated from OCADU (Toronto) and the Sandberg Instituut (Amsterdam), and has worked for The Walrus Magazine, Metahaven and Bruce Mau Design. He was also the designer and an editorial board member of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape/Political Economy. Chris’ research explores graphic design’s entanglement with power, standards, and the document. He co-guest-edited issue 141 of C magazine on the theme of “Graphic Design” with Ali Shamas Qadeer.

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