depatriarchise design could not exist without its collaborators, contributors and supporters. This site is dedicated to the people who have taken part in the ongoing discussion on the complicity of design in the reproduction of oppressive systems and feminist resistance.
Mathilde Avogadro, born in 1995 in Avignon, France, is now based in Lausanne, and graduated of the Bachelor of Graphic Design at ECAL. Her own point of view and the re-appropriation of her emotions are part of her work, and it is through social networks that she learns and finds her inspiration. Mathilde uses Instagram as a platform to experiment with graphic forms (editing, texture and colour research). In 2018, Mathilde and Elise Connor began a project called « Good for a Girl » during their studies at ECAL, this project is questioning the teaching and practice of art and design across an international feminist spectrum. In 2019 Mathilde and Elise became Artistic Directors for La Fête du Slip, Lausanne.
Mayar El Bakry is a Swiss Egyptian designer and researcher. She holds a BA in Visual Communication from the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel. Since September 2019, she has been pursuing an MA in Design Research at the University of the Arts in Bern. Mayar likes to work in the peripheries of design, merging diverse practices in her work. Currently, she’s focusing on food and cooking as a means to create spaces of discourses, exchange and dialogue in and out of academia. Within her research, she emphasises cross-cultural exchange, social relevance and collaboration. Next to her studies and research, she coordinates the Swiss Design Network and co-curates “Educating Otherwise” a continued education programme at the FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Basel.
Iyo Bisseck is an interaction designer, virtual reality searcher, machine learning lover, web designer and artist. She holds a BA in Visual Communication from ECAL, Ecole Cantonale d’art de Lausanne. Since September 2019, she has been pursuing an MA in Virtual reality Research at the ENSAM, Ecole Nationale des Arts et Métiers. She works at the crossroads of different fields such as art, social sciences, cognitive sciences and computer science. She is particularly interested in activist projects.
Elise Connor is a franco-anglo-indian Artistic Director, Photographer and Graphic Designer based in Lausanne Switzerland. She holds a BA in Cultural Mediation from the Sorbonne, Paris and is completing a BA in Visual Communication specialized in Graphic Design from ECAL, Lausanne. She started the project « Good for a Girl » in 2018 with Mathilde Avogadro as a way to question design practices and design education with an intersectional perspective. As of 2019 she and Mathilde Avogadro are artistic directors for the Fête du Slip festival in Lausanne. Her practice is focused on community and multiculturalism as a way to observe and question society.
Benedetta Crippa is a graphic designer and communication consultant based in Stockholm, Sweden. She holds a Master degree in Visual Communication from Konstfack University where she graduated with World of Desire, a handmade artist’s book celebrating plurality and visual democracy. Engaged across visual cultures and languages, her practice is concerned with ways in which graphic design can expand beyond current boundaries of methodology and aesthetics. Benedetta has contributed several essays to the website, among them “Dystopia is the New Porn: fantasies of domination and questions of power”.
common-interest is a non-profit creative practice based in Basel, Switzerland. Founded by Corinne Gisel and Nina Paim in 2018, common-interest initiates its own productions, takes on commissioned projects, and offers its expertise to non-profit, public sector, and philanthropic clients. In their projects they aim to link socially and culturally relevant insight—scientific, scholarly, journalistic, artistic, or otherwise—and broad audiences through creative means of storytelling and mediation. In order to do so, they apply “designerly ways of thinking across various disciplines such as writing, editing, publishing, curating, and exhibition-making”, as they put it. common-interest developed the visual identity of deptarirachise design *!Labs!* and also hosted the third *!Lab!* called “Pizzas of Inequality. Gender Disbalance as Edible Statistics”.
Corinne Gisel is a Swiss designer, writer, and researcher. She holds a Bachelor degree in Graphic Design from Gerrit Rietveld Academie in the Netherlands and is currently finishing a Master degree in Cultural Publishing at Zurich University of the Arts in Swizerland. Her writing covers topics such as design education, dress culture, the digitalisation of the museum, LGBTQ+ button badges, and money as a medium for political opposition. Next to teaching and lecturing at festivals and in school, she also co-conceived the book Taking a Line for a Walk published by Spector Books Leipzig in 2016, and co-edited the book Protest.The Aesthetics of Resistance published by Lars Müller Publishers in 2018. Together with Nina Paim she founded common-interest.
Griselda Flesler is a designer, researcher, writer and educator, and the head of the Chair of Design and Gender Studies at the FADU, University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. Since we first conducted an interview with her for the website in 2017, we are in a continuos conversation and exchange of knowledge and experiences.
Magdalena Goldin is an anthropologist, gender researcher, reproductive health counsellor and feminist activist, currently based in Lima, Peru. Magdalena is a founder of Degenerar, a consultancy that conducts multidisciplinary research devoted to gender and women’s studies, with a strong focus on sexual and reproductive health. Magdalena is a frequent contributor to Tribuna Feminista, Proyecto Kahlo, Pikara Magazine and Mujeres Mundi. In collaboration with Maya Ober she has written “Polarised migration: self-perspectives on gold, capital and exploitation of women”.
Professor Johanna Lewengard is a communication designer and head of the Master’s programme in Visual Communication at Konstfack. Students of this two-years programme are given the opportunity to challenge and deepen their graphic design and/or illustration practice in relation to broader social, cultural and economic contexts. For our platform we had a conversation with Johanna and graphic designer and programme’s alumna Benedetta Crippa about design education.
Anja Neidhardt is a PhD student at Umeå Institute of Design and Umeå Centre for Gender Studies. The aim of her research is to identify and analyse alternative, intersectional feminist practices that could be implemented by design archives and museums in order to contribute to the development of more just design disciplines. Before starting her PhD she worked as a self-employed design journalist and educator. In 2016 she graduated with a Master degree in Design Curating and Writing from Design Academy Eindhoven. From 2012 until 2014 she was a member of form Design Magazine’s editorial team. Anja is contributing to depatriachise design since June 2017, and became co-editor in February 2018. One of her latest pieces is “The Politics of Display. Review of Vitra Design Museum’s Papanek Exhibition”.
Maya Ober is a designer, researcher, educator, writer, and activist based in Basel, Switzerland. Maya is the founding editor of depatriarchise design. She works as a research associate at the Institute of Industrial Design at the Academy of Arts and Design in Basel. In her studio, Maya develops cross-platform projects, which explore production means, materials, and their socio-political milieu, recently focusing mostly on textile. We recently published her conversation with Prof. Johanna Lewengard and Benedetta Crippa, “Expanding Knowledges: Pedagogies of Freedom for Visual Communication”.
Nina Paim is a Brazilian designer, researcher, and curator. She holds a Bachelor degree in Graphic Design from Gerrit Rietveld Academie in the Netherlands and a Master degree in Design Research from University of the Arts in Bern, Switzerland. She has taught and lectured in many different countries. In 2014, she curated the exhibition Taking a Line for a Walk at the 26th Biennial of Graphic Design Brno in the Czech Republic, for which she received a Swiss Design Award in 2015. She also co-conceived and edited the book which developed out of this exhibition and was published by Spector Books Leipzig in 2016. Between 2017 and 2018 she was the program curator of the Swiss Design Network conference Beyond Change that questioned the role of design in times of global transformation. In 2018, she co-founded common-interest together with Corinne Gisel.
Abigail Schreider is an interdisciplinary designer from Argentina pursuing her Master studies at the Köln International School of Design in Germany, where she researches about gender norms and service design practice. Abigail currently defines herself as “under re-construction process” after the inevitable awakening that gender and feminist theory bring. She contributes to depatriachise design in many different ways, among them translations, knowledge exchange and on site support during Building Platforms at Beyond Change.