As an Arabic speaker growing up in the United States, my familiarity with the language was never as strong as my relatives back home. It was passed down to me only from my mother, and my tongue exists simply as a recreation of hers.
After discovering letterpress, I had the question: what does Arabic movable type look like? Through research, I learned that due to the (at least) 3 glyphs per character, accents, and a range of ligatures, Arabic letterpress was not as practical or nearly as beautiful as the manuscripts created by scribes were.
Through this piece I consider the forced attempt of applying Arabic to movable type, an invention not made to accommodate the fluid nature of the script. It was a broken replication, an attempt to assimilate which never took. l couldn’t help but see myself within this history. I see myself in its awkward nature, adjusting to a form unfamiliar to my identity. This piece, therefore, is an ode to displacement and its effects