within this portfolio website, i’ve collected and documented works I’ve done primarily in second and third year of my studies. some of the projects are done for class, some in my spare time.

a lot of the popups are scrollable, so please take a look at all the documentation and don’t hesitate to reach out!

maja.usak@gmail.com

3438708@kabk.nl

ig @__00473

☆˗ˏˋ hiii´ˎ˗ my name is maja usak, i was born and grew up in poland, now have moved away to the hague, the netherlands - to study graphic design. my work is mostly based in 3d design, combined with analogue techniques. i like switching in between digital and physical whenever i work and i’m mostly guided by the materials i work with.

CATALOGUE

working with best dutch book design collection.

assignment: make a catalogue with your own selection.

For this project I picked the books very intuitively, trying to find some commonalities. After the first look, all of the publications were focused on different ways of world building, talking about either physical places or imagined lands of various artists. I quickly became interested in creating a navigation tool throughout those lands, exploring ways of combining them by a form but still being able to differentiate one from the other. I looked for inspiration in geological maps, reliefs, and natural structures build by ants in the wood, which led me to create a metallic like terrain maps, with exerts of an image from each of the books.

BODY AND CYBERSPACE

assignment: website and series of two posters based on a randomised historical event [beginning of feminist movements in the US]

It’s 1991 and a researcher has built a machine [computer] to access data from the future. She is hopeful for the rise of internet and craves the new space to rebuild her relation to her own body and free herself from the view of men that surround her on the streets, in the supermarkets, in the office. The computer tells the truth, it knows the truth because it has seen it, it has read it and she has survived what the future is. It tells the truth of what the researcher is not ready for yet. The truth and the future are not what she wanted it to be, there is no end to social structures in cyberspace, as whatever has been build by man is going to think like a man that built it. She scans through the sources, that prove the further exploitation of the female body in internet spaces and sees through the truth and the future.

e-“rot”ic@3

ZINE made from a part of “Utopia” by Bernadette Mayer, compiled with cutouts from Lost and Found magazine.

“PEOPLE TELL STORIES ABOUT SEX”

textile piece in collaboration with Theodora Fisher

we took the title from a quote “whales tell stories about sex” as a way to demystify sex and put it up next to collected and written down fragments of conversations about funny one night stand stories, jokes about mini skirts, complicated situation-ships and others of sort.

EMBROIDERY

Moving away from Poland was a decision I’ve made quite early on and have been planning on doing for a while, but only now have I started to feel the longing and a sort of nostalgia looking back at my childhood home, living close to the all the women in my family- my great grandma, aunt, grandma, mom and sister.

This project is a letter for all the women in my family, as well as a thank you for keeping our memory alive by sharing stories and collecting photographs, books, jewellery, fabrics and many more.

The collection shows ornaments representing each woman in my family, by a floral symbol, screen printed over a photograph of them, that I found in my great grandma’s collection. I took a lot of inspiration from traditional Polish folk embroidery, making a digital/pixelated ornament to touch on the slow disappearance of my culture in modern day media, by making an easily reproduced and recognisable symbol.

“I’m here with Carol Seajay on Saturday…”

assignment: publish a [part] of a transcription from Suzanne Snider interviews with women in print.

In the beginning of the class in November we got access to interviews from Suzanne Snider with women active in the feminist and lesbian movements in the 70’s and 80’s in America. It was more of a blind pick, landing on Carol Seajay, but I so quickly became fond of her. The interview is held at her house, with a cat purring somewhere in the background. Now, having to listen to it probably more than 10 times, I have the same fondness for it as I did the first time I’ve listened to it.

To give it back I wanted the transcription to show the care I have for Carol and all the women involved. The first section of the book contains images I gathered from different sources of places mentioned by Carol, to visualise the life in America during those times. Second, is all about the Lesbian Households - a collective active in San Francisco during the 70’s and 80’s, that walked around and took pictures of lesbians and their living situations as well as everyday life. Last part is an homage to the Feminist Bookstore News, a publication led by Carol.

materials: lcd screens, raspberry pi pico, steel plates, lquid latex, self-composed perfumes, wires.

Hunger wrapped in skin.

A primitive machine - useless, dysfunctional.

It gasps for air, its organs lie heavy, its limbs weak.

You can feel it too.

Falling behind, serving no higher purpose.

You can’t deny it.

We have outgrown it.

Its heart pacing, struggling to keep up.

Its lungs filled with useless filthy air.

You stretch out a hand, a reflex, nothing more. An attempt - trying to prove it still serves a purpose. But it doesn’t. It’s pointless.

A crude mechanism, outdated. Inefficient.

It has nothing left to offer.

We have moved on.

No more hunger, no more twitching, no more trembling.

Let the body decay.

We are not creatures of impulse anymore. We do not live for the now.

“Lobotomy of the body” takes on philosophies of Jean Baudrillard’s “metamorphoses metaphors metastases”and explores the disconnection between mind and body in the context of technological progress. The body, now a decaying vessel, is slowly getting consumed by the ever-expanding mind.

screen dialogue:

"take a look at yourself.

wrapped in flesh.

drenched in need.

a slow, wet collapse.

you are hunger wrapped in skin.

you are the twitching muscle

the shaking hand,

fast pacing heart.

without us you are just

a pile of bones and draped skin.

i am the teacher that’s holding you back.

the one that says:

no, not yet, not like this.

you are a thing of want.

i am the one that knows better.

the one that separates you from the soil.

you twitch, you scratch,

you rub at your eyes,

you scrunch your nose.

crack your knuckles,

stretch out your legs,

furrow your eyebrows."