The Artist Is Not an Aesthetic Decorator
Can the artist influence social development ?
Artwork by Haya Halaw, Syrian artist and storyteller. Presented as a gallery installation in the exhibition at the Fab Lab, Graduate Institute (April 2–28, 2025). Courtesy of the artist.
To Tell a Story Is to Make Someone Exist
Telling stories is never neutral. It’s a profoundly human act. Since the beginning of time, stories have connected us, shaped us, and carried what data alone cannot: the complexity of life, emotion, trauma, memory, and hope.
Storytelling is a way to make voices heard, to challenge dominant narratives, and to redefine reality through diverse perspectives.
In the context of societal development, storytelling enables communities to reclaim their voices — voices often silenced, flattened, or ignored. Storytelling becomes a tool of reappropriation. It helps identify real needs, shape more just and grounded projects, and shift people from being passive recipients to active agents of their own narratives.
Nothing Is Isolated, Nothing Is Neutral
Artwork by Noha Habaieb, Tunisian visual artist and illustrator. Presented as a gallery installation in the exhibition at the Fab Lab, Graduate Institute (April 2–28, 2025). Courtesy of the artist.
As Edward W. Said, a prominent professor of comparative literature, reminded us, no field exists in isolation — not art, not politics, not development. Colonial history, systems of economic domination, and cultural hierarchies continue to shape our narratives and our notions of progress.
Development cannot be neutral. It must be aware of the injustices embedded in historical storytelling, social structures, and economic inequalities. In this context, storytelling becomes a tool for constructive critique. It challenges, exposes, and repositions the debate.
The Artist as a Human Lens
Artworks by Hassan Manasrah, award-winning Jordanian-Palestinian visual artist. Presented as a gallery installation in the exhibition at the Fab Lab, Graduate Institute (April 2–28, 2025). Courtesy of the artist.
This is where the artist plays a crucial role. Not as a bystander, and certainly not as an aesthetic decorator. The artist is a lens, a light-bearer, a human compass.
Through their work, the artist reveals what is hidden, gives form to what is unspoken, and creates spaces for reflection and debate. Artists summon memory, evoke emotion, and link personal narratives to larger social questions.
They reconnect the intimate with the political, the past with the future. They bring the human back into systems that often dehumanize. Artistic storytelling can dismantle rigid narratives, restore erased identities, and feed a more just and empathetic vision of development.
A Living Exhibition
This vision comes to life in our current exhibition, running from April 2 to April 28 at the Fab Lab of the Graduate Institute.
Through visual works, the exhibition explores the role of storytelling in social transformation, human dignity, and development. It invites us to listen differently, to feel, to question, and to imagine more broadly.
Presented in the context of a space that shapes the future decision-makers of social development, the exhibition is also a call to responsibility. It challenges us to connect — with each other, with our histories, and with the stories that shape our collective future.
