Tracey Shiffman
I direct you inside the story of when the Dutch Indies arrived, alongside the fact that six other countries, before and after them, colonized this nation. Through this work, I'm decolonizing the story and visually presenting it with a contemporary look.
What is Sambal ?
Sambal is a traditional condiment usually found in many indonesian households and restaurants around the country. Similar to ketchup, it is a staple detail to every food because of its historical standing with the history of the country's independence.
How did I build this story in this book?
Hot Spell takes you through stages of stories from the start of the dutch indies colonization in the eastern part of Indonesia. Transitioning to the effects happening in Indonesia after independence day and the idea that all success was credited to the dutch. Meanwhile, they stole spices, created trauma, and at the end helped us learn the pain that created this magnificent sauce.
The Brief
The project allows me to pick and choose a topic that needed to be decolonized. In this case, my background as an Indonesian took me to the story behind my favorite condiment called sambal.
Research Stage
It starts off with the basic questions, leading into the idea of what the story line is about and how I want the readers to understand in the end.
How about the Image treatment and typography style?
Hotspell takes places before 1945, way before Indonesia received their independence. This affects the way I can choose what treatments to put in the book. Clarity wasn't part of that era, imperfection was. Adding noise treatment worked well with the concept. Since the topic includes the idea of spices as well as showing that sambal is basically a spicy condiment, it makes sense to photograph chili in a different way. Raw images with vibrant colors portray how contrasting situations were back then. In this case, a mind map of question is shown to help me think what other aspects that I can translate visually about this subject.
Visualizing pain and torture through vibrant imagery.
Details on the book
The pestle plays a huge role in the process of making this sambal. Using this in the book creates an emphasis that this tool didn’t just helped the cooking process, but also a symbol of resistance and unity.
Below is what each pestle represents the key ingredient of indonesia’s signiture sambal from different regions.
Scaling up the book to a poster
Here is where we extended the view of the book to a larger audience. The chosen picture creates tension as the Point of view is now directed to the audience looking at it. The burnt out color looks to it showcases the heat of the sauce we've been talking about in the book. Ideally this poster will be displayed in crowded places, like subway stops, sides of a building.
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