Graphic Designer
Manami’s Time Zone:
Year2019
AwardsBest Awards 2019 [Student Category]
Project DescriptionBilingual people often find themselves in a liminal space of two cultures. It is a place that can often feel lonely, frustrating and confusing as one tries to identify which culture they truly belong to. As someone who has had first-hand experience living in this liminal space, this was a personal research project that highlighted my imperfect knowledge of Japanese and English - the challenge being to portray these experiences to a monolingual audience. It explores common mistakes and habits I have observed in both English and Japanese, showing how the organised mess of the two languages may be visualised in my head.
This project was to encourage other bilingual people to embrace their diversity as one should not feel “uprooted”, “rootless” or “hybrid” but instead should identify themselves within both cultures for “bicultural people are the bridges between the cultures they belong to and can see both sides” (Grosjean, F. (2010), Bilingual: Life and Reality. In (pp. 108-120). Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press)