← ContentsLOTUS / FOLD STUDY

Project 01. Original textured numeral artwork.

THE PETAL
SHELTER

THE BRIEF

THE RESPONSE

I wanted to take tea back to its roots, looking at the tea plant itself and its petals as the starting point for the shelter. This led to an exploration of origami, using folding as both a way of developing the form and thinking about portability. A flat surface is folded, opened and transformed into a protective petal-like structure, creating the Petal Shelter, a design shaped by the plant, the landscape and the women it was primarily designed to support.

01 / ORIGINS

FROM RITUAL TO COMMODITY

This collage looks at where tea started and how its meaning changed over time. The person meditating inside the cup represents the peaceful and ritual side of tea and its roots in China. At the same time, the cup starts to look like the sight of a gun pointing directly at him. I used that contrast to show how something peaceful slowly became connected to power, trade and control as tea became more valuable to the West.

02 / COLONISATION

THE WEIGHT OF TEA

This collage focuses more on the painful side of tea's history in Kenya. The man's face is almost consumed by the leaf, with the veins cutting across him and becoming part of his face. I wanted the person, the plant and the land to almost become one image because the history of tea isn't only about the product itself. It's also about the people whose land and labour were used to produce it, especially during colonialism.

03 / KENYAN TEA

BEAUTY WITHIN CONTRADICTION

I didn't want my research to only show tea in Kenya as something negative. There is still a lot of beauty surrounding it, from the landscape to the people and the culture that has developed around it. This collage is intentionally more playful and dreamlike, using the bus, people, landscape and oversized sun to create a more positive image of Kenyan tea. It shows that even though the history is complicated, tea has still become part of Kenya's own identity and story.

04 / RECONNECTION

REPAIRING THE STORY

The last collage is more about looking forward. I combined the image of a Kenyan woman with pieces of blue and white Chinese porcelain to reconnect Kenyan tea with its original Chinese roots. The gold lines hold the different fragments together, almost like something that has been broken and repaired without trying to hide the cracks. For me, this became a way of thinking about the project moving forward. Instead of ignoring the difficult history of tea, the idea is to acknowledge it and find a way of reconnecting the different cultures and histories that now exist around it.