Barbara Urrutia-Badilla is a Chilean PhD student currently based in the UK. I’m interested in exploring the connections between the dynamics of citizenship, politics, grassroots communities and their narratives. In particular, I’m engaged in how the critical use of typography, especially annotation, can reveal the values, contexts and inherent biases of social discourses, challenging traditional modes of thinking and visualising the representation of data.
By encouraging a more inclusive and critical understanding of the concept of data, my research has prioritised the use and practice of non-conventional visual methods drawn from graphic and typographic design to explore its participatory potential. This involves recognising that data is not neutral and can serve to encompass diverse perspectives within the various forms that community narratives can take.
With a strong interest in Latin American design for social change from the 1960s and 1970s and convinced that design could be considered a powerful tool for democratising invisible aspects of citizenship, this research aims to contribute to the exercise of continuing to preserve ways of thinking from the global south, as a way of decentralising imposed hegemonic power through a pluriversal thinking, by doing things outside the colonising oppression of Western design.