“Excessive” is the word Mariela uses to describe today’s world. An excess of stimuli, information, production, and consumption. All it takes is opening our cell phones to have the whole world—fast-paced and commodified—right in front of us.

“This creates a sense of being everywhere at once, yet not staying or dwelling anywhere.” This sense of unease led Mariela Arizpe ( DIS’26), a design graduate, to explore the boundaries between report, attention, identity, and the present.

Roots, report Reconciliation

Before “Yollotl” became a project, Mariela explains that it was “an staffthat stemmed from a phrase: “I have a constant fear of wanting to be everything and ending up being nothing.” So, she put all her effort and her “Yollotl” (heart in her homeland, Mexico) into it and set out on a journey toward a refuge that would embrace her and all her past selves.

Throughout this process, the designer followed a ritual that she repeated every day until she was able to bring her project to life. This methodology consisted of walking (to think), writing (to organize her ideas), and observing people (to capturestaff universal concerns of others in a project staff ).

Cyanotype on Textiles

After completing the ritual and visualizing that “heavy, large” coat that made her want to curl up inside it, Mariela proceeded to print photographs of her life using the cyanotype method, a process created in the 19th century by John Herschel and popularized years later by the scientist Ana Aitkins. Cyanotype involves sensitizing a surface with an emulsion of ammonium ferric citrate and potassium ferricyanide, exposing it to ultraviolet light in contact a negative or an object, and developing it in water. Mariela applied this photographic process to the fabric she chose for her project: denim.

The result is a vital imprint brought to life in her work Degree work , where she demonstrates what she has learned during the degree program—an imprint that “leaves the seams on the outside so they can be seen.”