Nubian Visual Culture for Contemporary Artistic & Printed Textile Designs

Identity is a complex of roads and turns. It remains difficult to be defined. Identity can be fixed or changing but definitely problematic in its meanings and manifestations. Depicting Nubian visual culture before 60^th can be a means to artistic experimentation and a material for inspiration for myself as a Nubian textile designer. It can somehow bridge the gap between form and content; between the visual and essence of Nubian symbolic meaning and heritage. This paper will present how the researcher can use different design / drawing techniques to convey the aesthetic and the realistic. It also outlines the practice-based method as a constructive approach to develop the researcher’s skills by focusing on her Nubian cultural identity to encourage different societies to learn about Nubian heritage.
The focus of this paper is to show how the linkage between using different artistic media, digital printing and image collecting of old Nubians houses and representative symbols before the 60’s is used as an experimental strategy through digital technology and other techniques in order to create contemporary designs inspired by Nubian visual culture.  
This paper will discuss my experiential learning and the practice of the artistic approach by novel use of symbols/ patterns inspired by Nubian visual culture, using digital printing, drawing and dyeing techniques. It will discuss how different dyeing and printing methods can be used to create unique artwork wall hanging designs to express Nubian visual culture. The results of some experimental and artwork were presented in different exhibitions to express the author’s viewpoint of Nubian heritage and her cultural identities through practice and her journey to express the Nubian heritage before resettlement in the 60’s.