Decoding Christmas dissects the visual rhetoric constructed around the Christmas holiday—a colonial artifact that has been elevated to a global icon. Through a collection of images extracted from their original context, stripped of meaning, and recontextualized, the research exposes the hidden mechanisms behind their societal role.
Freed from their initial materiality, these images invite a deeper interrogation of their function in shaping collective norms and values.
Rooted in the words of Hannah Arendt—“Half of politics is image-making, the other half is the art of making people believe the image”—the project adopts what could be called an aesthetics of trust: the deliberate crafting of belief as an artistic practice, where recognition becomes a tool of persuasion, forging an unsettling fusion of faith and compliance.
At its core, this work confronts the broader anxieties of representation, interrogating the symbolic culture and designed artifacts that define our world. By deconstructing and reassembling imagery, it challenges the viewer’s role as a passive spectator and provokes critical engagement with the manufactured icons of our time.
ISIA U 2024
Project
Chiara Rebolino
Coding
Lucia Rebolino
Supervisor
Matteo Guidi
Font
ABC Marist - Book, ABC Dinamo
Paper
Arena Smooth Extra White, Fedrigoni
Sixties (IBO Paper), Reflex
Decoding Christmas dissects the visual rhetoric constructed around the Christmas holiday—a colonial artifact that has been elevated to a global icon. Through a collection of images extracted from their original context, stripped of meaning, and recontextualized, the research exposes the hidden mechanisms behind their societal role.
Freed from their initial materiality, these images invite a deeper interrogation of their function in shaping collective norms and values.
Rooted in the words of Hannah Arendt—“Half of politics is image-making, the other half is the art of making people believe the image”—the project adopts what could be called an aesthetics of trust: the deliberate crafting of belief as an artistic practice, where recognition becomes a tool of persuasion, forging an unsettling fusion of faith and compliance.
At its core, this work confronts the broader anxieties of representation, interrogating the symbolic culture and designed artifacts that define our world. By deconstructing and reassembling imagery, it challenges the viewer’s role as a passive spectator and provokes critical engagement with the manufactured icons of our time.
ISIA U 2024
Project
Chiara Rebolino
Coding
Lucia Rebolino
Supervisor
Matteo Guidi
Font
ABC Marist - Book, ABC Dinamo
Paper
Arena Smooth Extra White, Fedrigoni
Sixties (IBO Paper), Reflex
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