Gust For You
Yomna Mohamed
Qalb Shadia (Shadia’s Heart) takes the form of a redesigned blanket, part of an ongoing series reimagining domestic objects. The 6.5 ft × 4.7 ft blanket draws from those widely circulated across Africa and the Global South. Soft and familiar, they operate as shared, intimate surfaces that are slept beneath, and embedded in daily life. Unlike books, which are often solitary, the blanket becomes a collective site of togetherness.
The blanket also functions as a graphic archive, mapping visual systems found in Arabic products across the region. These objects collapse distinctions between the personal and the commercial. Makers and craftsmen often sign their work with their names, their children’s names, photographs, or personal contact information, treating authorship itself as a central design element. Compositions incorporate playful graphics, such as cartoon characters or familiar logos, inserted not for consistency but for ornamental function, in contrast to formal design conventions.
Throughout the work, my personal email and full name appear in large, whimsical typefaces and neon colors, alongside photographs of my father in his 20s. Phrases like “May Allah Give You Warmth,” Apple logos, Lacoste icons, and thumbs-up symbols are layered into the composition.
Gust for You is an experimental publishing project that examines how domestic ephemera functions as an unintentional counter-archive within Arab visual culture, reframing ornamentation and “kitsch” as a sophisticated system of design, memory, and language preservation.
Through these projects, Gust for You addresses the historical exclusion of Arab, working-class, and diasporic visual culture from design discourse.