Positions Through Contextualising

Positions Through Contextualising

Annotated Bibliography

Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a Feminist Life. Durham: Duke University Press.

Sara Ahmed’s exploration of complaint, institutional power, and everyday resistance gave me a critical lens through which to examine how masculinity is embedded in the structure of objects. Her discussion of how institutions work not just through rules but through silence and affect directly influenced how I began to read male-coded as complicit in reinforcing power. These objects don’t merely accessorize masculinity; they carry its weight and enforce its norms. By morphing, disrupting, or softening these items, I attempt to “complain” through design, making visible the gendered scripts that often go unnoticed. Her emphasis on lived experience resonates deeply with my project’s use of everyday objects to critique the cultural codes of masculinity.

Halberstam, J. (2011). The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke University Press.

Halberstam’s theory of failure as a form of resistance gave me both permission and direction in my iterative work. His rejection of mastery and control — qualities often tied to traditional masculinity — helped me reframe “mistakes” in my process not as weaknesses, but as moments of subversion. By distorting, stretching, or collapsing objects like the belt, I began to see these failures as visual cues of a masculinity that is fraying, bending under pressure, or refusing to perform correctly. His writing made me realise that queering masculine objects doesn’t always require adding new meaning; sometimes it’s enough to interrupt their supposed function.

Plester, B. (2009). ‘”Take it like a man!”: Performing hegemonic masculinity through organizational humour.’ The Comic Organization, 6(4), pp. 476–493.

By analysing jokes, banter, and everyday interactions, the article reveals how humour becomes a mechanism for maintaining male dominance and policing gender norms. This reading provides concrete examples of how masculinity is practiced socially through informal practices, which is something I aim to challenge through my iterations. This subtle enforcement of gendered behaviour inspired me to look at objects that function similarly (Plester, 2009).

Rosler, M. (1975). Semiotics of the Kitchen. [Film].

Rosler’s video piece was central to my thinking about how everyday objects — especially when catalogued and performed — can become agents of critique. I borrowed this strategy when iterating my own objects. Rosler’s work made me realise that repetition doesn’t confirm meaning — it can also dismantle it, for instance, the more I morphed and manipulated the belt, the more absurd and unstable its original symbolism became.

BBC Radio 4. (2023). Masculinity: from Durkheim to Andrew Tate. 22 Jan. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001h3zr

This podcast provided a historical and contemporary overview of how masculinity has been constructed, idealised, and enforced — from early sociological theories to modern influencers like Andrew Tate. The discussion sharpened my awareness of which traits continue to be celebrated under the umbrella of masculinity: control, dominance, emotional repression. It made me consider how these values are not only spoken but embodied — particularly through objects associated with “manhood.”  

Bennett, H. (2025). Sonder: Adam Lin’s Affectionate Depiction of Masculinity in Domestic Spaces. [online] Itsnicethat.com. Available at: https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/adam-lin-sonder-photography-project-220425

Adam Lin’s photographic project introduced a different view of masculinity — one rooted in softness, domesticity, and quiet affection. This is relevant to my exploration of masculinity as a layered identity — one that includes softness and intimacy as much as dominance or toughness. Lin’s photographic framing of masculinity in quiet, everyday objects and gestures informs how I consider material and symbolic representation in my own work.

Guffey, E.E. (2014). Posters. Reaktion Books, pp.240–250.

The section “Making Martyrs in the Age of Photoshop” critically examines martyr posters in the Arab world, with particular reference to Lebanon. Guffey describes how posters of leaders like Gamal Abdel Nasser or Antoun Saadeh carried cultural weight, tying masculinity to national identity, public memory, and death. This helped me contextualize martyr posters not just as visuals, but as tools of ideology — where masculine identity is cemented through repetition and glorification. As someone of Arab heritage, this also felt personally relevant. These posters influence how masculinity is perceived within my own culture. My work challenges these portrayals by inserting softness, familial elements, and questioning the authority of the masculine “hero” figure.

Shibli, A. (2011). Death. [Photography Series] Available at: http://www.ahlamshibli.com/photography/death.htm

Ahlam Shibli’s Death is a photographic series that documents martyr posters in Palestine, treating them as both memorials and graphic artefacts. Viewing the entire series helped me grasp the visual vocabulary shared across these posters — sombre portraits, nationalist symbols, bold type. It also exposed the vast scale of their reproduction and circulation. This body of work gave me a more nuanced understanding of how martyrdom is visually coded, and how gender — particularly masculinity — is central to that coding. It was essential in shaping my design response: by mimicking these formats while inserting subversive content, I seek to question the expectations these posters set for male identity, honour, and grief.

Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.

Judith Butler’s concept of gender as a socially constructed performance is foundational to my interrogation of masculinity. In Gender Trouble, she argues that identity is not innate but enacted repeatedly through behaviour, symbols, and language. This lens allowed me to rethink how masculinity is portrayed and reinforced through martyr posters — highly constructed visuals that repeat specific codes of power, sacrifice, and control. Rather than reflecting an “authentic” male identity, these posters perform masculinity as strong, stoic, and unyielding. My project aims to interrupt this repetition, replacing rigidity with vulnerability, and questioning what happens when masculinity is softened or deconstructed. Butler’s framework supports my efforts to move beyond documentation and toward intervention.

Braich Posters (2025). جمال عبد الناصر Gamal Abdel Nasser Lebanese Political Arabic Poster 60s. [Poster] Ebay. Available at: https://www.ebay.com/itm/393415861722

This original poster of Gamal Abdel Nasser encapsulates many of the visual and symbolic tropes I seek to examine. The delicate floral border contrasts sharply with the austere image of Nasser, creating a visual tension between softness and strength — an aesthetic contradiction that directly inspired my project. I was drawn to this contrast as it unintentionally exposes the fragility behind the masculine ideal. This representation of a military leader being visually “honoured” also reflects how martyrdom and masculinity are publicly commemorated. My posters respond to this format by mimicking its structure but subverting its message — layering familial tenderness, handwritten text, and emotional nuance to critique how masculinity is staged posthumously. This specific artefact shaped my thinking about how to work both with and against the original visual language.

Gegisian, A. (2014). Self-Portrait as an Ottoman Woman (2012–2016). [Archival Postcard Installation] Available at: https://gegisian.com/portfolio/self-portrait-as-an-ottoman-woman/

Aikaterini Gegisian’s Self-Portrait as an Ottoman Woman uses archival postcards to explore how gender and national identity are represented through found imagery. This was a key influence on my decision to work with personal and familial archives — specifically photographs of my grandfather. Like Gegisian, I use collage as both a visual and critical method: arranging images into constellations that tell alternative stories about gender and heritage. Her work helped me understand the power of recontextualising existing media to challenge dominant narratives. Through her lens, I saw how personal history can intersect with broader political symbolism, and this inspired me to fuse the personal with the ideological in my own reinterpretation of martyr posters.

Goldberg, J. (1995). Raised by Wolves. Scalo. Available at: https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/art/jim-goldberg-raised-by-wolves/

Jim Goldberg’s Raised by Wolves is an emotionally raw portrait of American youth, blending photography with handwritten text. Although his context is entirely different, his method of layering image and writing deeply influenced my visual strategy. In his work, handwritten annotations add intimacy and vulnerability — qualities I aimed to introduce to the rigid, iconic style of martyr posters. I experimented with adding handwritten text and familial images to mine, not only to soften their tone but to introduce multiple, conflicting voices. Goldberg’s approach showed me that graphic composition can be deeply emotional, and that the combination of text and image can become a powerful tool to challenge fixed narratives — particularly those around masculinity.

Critical Analysis

The 1970s poster of Gamal Abdel Nasser offers more than political homage — it visualizes a masculinity shaped by reverence, authority, and national memory. In Lebanon during this period, the anniversaries of the deaths of pan-Arab figures like Nasser or Lebanese resistance leader Antoun Saadeh were marked by commemorative posters that circulated widely (Guffey, 2014, pp. 240–250). These artefacts carried deep cultural significance, reinforcing a shared Arab identity through visual repetition and collective mourning (Guffey, 2014, pp. 240–250).

The Nasser poster’s iconography is especially instructive. His portrait, centrally placed within an ornate oval, is rendered with precision and solemnity. Framed by delicate florals, his image is not softened, but elevated — sealed in not only by ornamental borders, but by history’s selective gaze. This juxtaposition caught my attention: the decorative flourishes traditionally coded as feminine encircle a figure constructed through the rigid codes of state-endorsed masculinity. It is this tension — between softness and severity, reverence and control — that shaped the foundation of my own response.

Formally, the poster performs masculinity as untouchable and monumental. The floral detailing does not destabilize the central figure’s power; instead, it serves to sanctify him. The oval frame, symmetrical and precise, signifies order, control, and containment. This became my entry point: What happens when that order is interrupted? When the frame is made porous, the iconography dispersed, and the myth destabilized?

By isolating and deconstructing the poster’s visual components, I began to understand how martyr aesthetics function as tools of masculine memorialisation. They flatten complex lives into singular narratives: the hero, the fighter, the leader. But what of the men behind those images? The tenderness of a father, the warmth of a friend, the care of a grandfather? These dimensions are consistently obscured. My reworked poster aims to reimagine the visual language of the way masculinity is represented in the Arab world, by replacing rigidity with multiple layers.

In doing so, I use fragments of memories consisting of found images, constructed pattern tiles, made from my grandfather’s clothing, and layers of handwritten love notes to construct an archive of presence rather than absence. Rather than wait for death to confer worth, I offer celebration in the now. The design becomes a form of lived homage, resisting the singularity imposed by conventional masculine memorials.

The original Nasser poster, through its reproduction and dissemination, performs masculinity using the visual codes of state power: hierarchy, permanence, symmetry. By borrowing its structure while subverting its content, I aim to disrupt that visual logic. My work asks: Who gets framed this way? Whose memory is preserved, and by whom?

This artefact ultimately challenged my understanding of graphic design as more than a tool for communication — revealing it instead as a ritualised practice of remembrance. In dialogue with Butler’s theory of performativity, I came to see how martyr posters iterate masculinity through visual repetition: in form, in composition, in material language. This reference taught me that to interrogate masculinity in design, one must first dismantle the very aesthetics that sustain it.

Reference 2: Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.

Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble became the hinge on which my project turned — not merely as theoretical grounding, but as an invocation to design differently. What stayed with me wasn’t only the now-circulated idea that gender is performative, but the more pressing proposition that repetition itself can be subversive. In her words: “If repetition is bound to persist as the mechanism of the cultural reproduction of identities, then the crucial question emerges: What kind of subversive repetition might call into question the regulatory practice of identity itself?” (Butler, 1990, p.42). This reframing of repetition — not as mimicry, but as rupture — guided how I approached the reworking of martyr posters and masculinity through design.

I believe the posters I engaged with operate within what Butler identifies as the “matrix of power” — systems that naturalize gender, authority, and sacrifice through visual grammar (Butler, 1990, p.42). My work began within that matrix — examining posters of heroic male figures framed by florals, military symbols, and solemn faces — but aimed to fracture it from within. I chose not to discard the language of martyrdom, but to alter it— both shifting the way masculinity is celebrated and also, its focus from commemorating the dead to appreciating the living, and in doing so, generating new visual knowledge. To perform its aesthetic codes, then scramble them.

In Butler’s terms, “if gender attributes and acts… are performative, then there is no preexisting identity by which an act or attribute might be measured” (Butler, 1990, p.180). The martyr poster, in contrast, performs masculinity as though it were fixed and preordained — a singular, ‘true’ gender identity anchored in sacrifice, honour, and strength. This visual performance conceals what Butler calls the “regulatory fiction” of gender — the idea that masculinity is an essence rather than a script (Butler, 1990, p.180). By exposing this fiction, I began to approach design as an active process — not just a means of visualising ideas, but a site for constructing and testing alternative masculinities.

In my reworked posters, I replaced stoic portraits with layers of my grandfather’s identity. He was not less masculine than Gamal Abdel Nasser, just a different kind of masculine; he was one of the first scuba divers in Egypt, beginning in 1962, and led a diving team that cleared explosives and sunken ships from the Suez Canal and these were the beginnings of his public achievements. But more importantly, Mohammed was a husband, a father and a grandfather who had a great passion for photography — a man with passion who is deeply loved and respected by his peers. His masculinity encompassed all of these roles. I rejected the rigid, singular, stoic portraits of martyrdom and instead infused my iterations with memory, intimacy, and the many facets of his life. Through this, I sought to proliferate what Butler refers to as “gender configurations outside the restricting frames of masculinist domination and compulsory heterosexuality” (Butler, 1990, p.180).

Butler’s insistence that there is no “true or false” masculinity allowed me to abandon authenticity as a design goal. I didn’t seek to correct the masculine image; I sought to show its layers — through graphic design, by building three distinct layers: image, pattern, and text. Ultimately, Gender Trouble taught me to treat visual language not as static documentation, but as a series of performed beliefs. My project became a way of performing belief differently — not by rejecting masculinity, but by letting it blur, soften, and expand beyond the borders.