Set in an abandoned factory, FORMLESS is a philosophical investigation embodied through a spatial experience, that interrogates identity not as fixed essence but as perpetual becoming. The installation challenges conventional identity discourse by refusing generic categorical frameworks, instead examining how character, context, and environment generate meaning through unstable relational assemblages as they seek to define themselves through, as well as against the process.

Manifesting as a progression of translucent panels with content that shifts with viewer position, the installation creates a phenomenological encounter where perception itself becomes unstable. This formal strategy embodies the central thesis: that identity exists not in fixed states but in continuous transitions. It insinuates intention as a force that moves the process along, perceivable in the space between states.

Critically, it defines formlessness not as absence or nothingness, but as "the constant loss of a state" , an active shedding rather than void.

This positions the work within ongoing philosophical debates about becoming versus being, challenging models of fixed identity. The forms and visuals within the installation are a record of an experimental visual and material dialogue, not guided by intention or aiming to reach any predetermined visual outcome, and instead, allowing the overarching narrative to dictate form.

The installation presents eight phases: Hybrid, Prelude, Birth, Development, Awakening, Conversation, Transcendence, (and back to) Hybrid, framing the experience as an attempt to freeze a single moment within this perpetual state of 'hybridity' in order to to deconstruct it and examine its internal process of becoming.

Viewers witness a battle between induced states of form and formlessness, where the tangible elements become almost dispensable while retaining intrinsic meaning. This creates a tension between process and product, material and immaterial, presence and dissolution.

FORMLESS redefines how we conceptualise identity, proposing it as neither coherent state nor fragmented multiplicity, but as continuous transformation; a state perpetually arriving at itself while already departing.

Funded by Mophradat (previously known as the Young Arab Theatre Fund), among other local sponsors, and exhibited in Amman, Jordan and Beirut, Lebanon.

The installation was featured in a campaign featuring emerging artists, that was designed for AIZONE, a high-fashion retailer.

FORMLESS started as a graphic publication, as a result of a study that confronted the politics of Arab identity representation through the lens of comic book superheroes. The work investigated how contemporary Arab superhero narratives, particularly through independent comics (at the time) perpetuated colonial dynamics by stripping characters of cultural, religious, and ethnic markers, rendering them blank canvases for Western projection, and placing the lack of identity at the core of their narratives.

Rather than reinforcing imposed/constructed/reductive definitions, FORMLESS proposes identity as iterative, malleable and relational The visual narrative stages a dialogue between three entities (character, environment, and context) that evolve independently and through interaction. Moving through phases involving a form of birth, awakening, lack, mimicry, exchange, and empowerment, these entities arrive at a state of "ever-changing hybridity" where identity exists as a process rather than fixed essence.

The work challenged both Orientalist representation (identity defined by Western gaze) and essentialism. Instead, the work posits identity as an interactive definition, neither defined self nor imposed 'other', but a perpetual negotiation that refuses reduction to place, time, politics, ethnicity (.etc) or any generically imposed terms that are usually used as parameters of its definition.

The formlessness becomes a resistance strategy: not the absence of identity, but a refusal of the terms that have historically constrained its definition.

*Looking back at this now, in 2025, I'm sure a lot can be reframed/contested, but I didn't want to edit the context within which 19 year old me was exploring these thoughts.

INTRANSIENCE is a site-specific installation that facilitates conversations around the construction of the legacy of place. It anchors the narrative to the skeletal remains of the West Pier in Brighton, augmenting the site through material, spatial and audiovisual layers to activate audiences into the storyworld

The installation halts the progression of linear time within the moment of the collapse of the pier's skeletal remains - its formal 'death' - creating a rift in this dimension that enables visitors to peer into a parallel dimension where they're immersed in the "Afterlife of Buildings". They find themselves eavesdropping on a debate between anthropomorphised structures on how to categorise the pier in its afterlife. Drawing from Greek chorus traditions and Jacques Lecoq's tension levels, the scripted audio debate oscillates between urgency and contemplation, exploring five elements of legacy: Imagination, Memory, Intent, History, and Form. The narrative deliberately removes spectators from passive observation, demanding they participate in shaping the legacy.

The physical space mirrors this conceptual framework. Designed as an inhabitable enclosure based on a collapsed pier kiosk, it sits simultaneously outside the standing skeleton yet inside the memory of what fell. It alters the physical experience of the space on Brighton beach, to insinuate the existence of this parallel dimension. Memory foam buried beneath pebbles mutes their sound beneath visitors' feet, and creates an uncanny sensation of the beach lifting them as they expect to resist the usual sinking-in. Mounds of pebbles appear to be pulled out of the beach, crystallised with alum salt - a material that preserves and simultaneously contributes to the current decay of the pier's skeletal remains - embodying the paradox of transience, particularly in proximity to the water.

The dialectic approach privileges polyphonic narratives over authoritative historical accounts, acknowledging subjective experiences while constructing a collective legacy that is not solely dictated by Cartesian space. The work becomes both an antidote to transience and an orchestration of entropy, offering audiences agency in creating stories that outlast physical structures. It is a meditation on how we construct meaning from the materials of memory and imagination, and what happens to that meaning when the physical form it is anchored to decays or ceases to exist.