Neighbors Helping Neighbors

Fictions of History

Illustration for the Baffler Magazine. This piece was created for Shamira Ibrahim’s article “Fictions of History” where she considers current efforts at “undisciplining data,” a necessary part of reanimating Black lives and explores the ways modern data-collection and surveillance can deny the humanity, and human aspirations, of those on the margins.

My favorite part of this piece is that it includes graphs created by Midjourney, a new artificial intelligence tool for artists. In the article, Ibrahim explores the ways modern data-collection and surveillance can deny the humanity, and human aspirations, of those on the margins. I explored a combination of type, colors, and imagery to visually convey this concept. In an earlier iteration of her article, Ibrahim mentioned how W.E.B Dubois was a leading Black pioneer in seeking out informational nuances. This inspired me to use Midjourney to create distorted and abstracted graphs in the style of Dubois’ iconic data portraits, which I then incorporated into the final illustration.

Client

Baffler Magazine

Year

2022

Team

Beatriz Lozano, Designer