Abstract
With the movement to repatriate stolen art from South and Southeast Asian countries, museums in the United States are beginning to return artifacts and sacred objects to the country of origin. The app interface with its easy navigation and concise information architecture serves as a discourse on the colonial histories of museums with a focus on decolonizing and reconstructing museum spaces through increased repatriation efforts. Central features of the app including educating the public on the current location, context, and histories of the artifacts and archiving a collection of resources on published work. The app users experience guided rituals and performances meant to be used by ethnic groups in museum spaces as a way to pay respects to the scared sculptures and to redefine the otherwise restricted interactions in museums. The app interface leads users to a safe pathway for sharing information on undiscovered looted objects, especially the stolen artifacts in private collections. A user friendly interface assists with interactions and conversations around the use of culture as aesthetic through the commodification and exploitation of religious objects. The app initially designed for the ‘Return Home’ exhibition on stolen Cambodian Khmer Buddha statue heads by Phung Huynh, serves as a model for UI/UX Design focused on facilitating collective action and building an online archive for repatriation efforts.
Presenters
Anika SarinAssistant Professor of Design, Graphic Design/Art, California State University Los Angeles, California, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
UX DESIGN FOR GOOD, DECOLONIZATION, REPATRIATION, MUSEUMS, SOUTH ASIAN ART
