Sophie Douala

0:06 Hi everyone my name is Sophie Dua thanks for the introduction.

0:11 And I'm a visual artist and creative director exploring design through the lens of culture Evolution and emotion currently in the background you can see a collection of of recent project so you get a general idea of what I do and so I'm really excited to be here and to introduce you a bit about my practice but before we dive into it I wanted to talk about something a little bit more personal and something that also entangles with my practice it is the idea of manifestation I feel like as long as I can remember I've always been a dreamer I've always been in my head inventing stories and predicting the future times ago I read this amazing article on Collins that was titled you are what you believe yourself to be and next to the image was an illustration that was Illustrated the reflection.

1:32 So this is not my design but I wanted to share it because when I saw it I had to really think this really resonates so this design highlights the relationship between complete confidence despair naivity rationality uncertainty and optimism all of this converging into the psychology of self- delusion it made me understand another layer of my brain and perhaps some potential point about my personality so coming back to manifesting or perhaps self-d delusion often at the beginning end of a year I like to write down some intentions and I had to blank most of it but one of them was to be invited to event guest to an event as a guest speaker and literally and literally one week later is ni's Dad emailed me about this event so is this magic in the end I do believe that setting intentions to what we want to do plays a big role in the creative process so continuing with it's nice that we work together for the first time in 2020 for the visual identity of one of their projects conscious creativity it's it was a series of opinion pieces exploring how to shape the future of the creative industry and this might look abstract but there is often a conceptual thinking behind my design whereas it is in this example to highlight a process an evolution or some sort of Duality or perhaps a connection a momentum I like to I like to work with keywords so that the design really highlight the story we are trying to share so here we can see the many layers between the contributor the art Direction the illustration into coming together into one strong piece so moving further to my story I was born in Cameroon I grew up in France and I'm currently based in Berlin the fact of being from the diaspora and having lived in many places gives me this feeling of being from nowhere and everywhere at the same time but moving to Berlin 11 years ago was a stepping point in my career I started working on posters for parties and to these days music is a big part of me so here you can see for example some of my current vinyl collection and on the right side is a very special design it is 100% made in Berlin as part of a community project. So it's this kind of project that is low quantity low budget but made with a lot of love and continuing with the topic of manifestation you might wonder how this design ended up here on the left is a digital artwork from the band 3070 and released on the label rym section they're based in London so Chase to them and on the right side is part of my first solo show follow the black rabbit that lasted six months at the stad Leake Museum of Amsterdam I feel that manifesting is about not limiting yourself being open to new experiences and cultivating boundary pushing mindset in my work for example the blurriness between Art and Design is something that I like to dig in another another important characteristic of my work is storytelling what you might have felt walking through this installation is a sense of rest pose introspection.

7:13 But also Melancholy an old to my generation hoping and searching those images captured by my friend and photographer Nixon mukisa aim to embody this nuances so as you see on top of the nice colors and gradient in my work. There is a lot of conceptual conceptual thinking and emotional depth and so I wanted to share one more project that is also illustrating the Deep creative process it is a video installation created for the recent Bower room party in Berlin and envision as a sort of meditative flow when I was working on this last November I was especially devastated by the news and felt the need to create something ♪

8:25 wholesome the piece is inspired by resilience and Collective Liberation how our social identities overlap and influence one another a multi-sensory experience with sound Visual and body sensation and an invitation to collectively enter a dream space and so to finish this presentation I would like to play an extract of this video so you get to to experience it. And it's going to be accompanied by a sound contributed by my friend musician tibia everything not lost can be ♪

9:28 saved ♪

10:35 thank you