I am a PhD student at Cardiff School of Art and Design, where I also studied for my BA and MA in ceramics. I began to experiment with 3D scanning and 3D printing technologies in 2011; using these technologies to access and re-imagine ceramic museum artefacts from the National Museum of Wales. This collaboration with the National Museum of Wales has developed over the years and is still ongoing. I digitize objects from the collections at the Museum, and then create new work from the 3D scans. These digital artefacts are then 3D printed, and sometimes altered further through physical manipulation. While the original museum artefacts are fixed and static, the digital models are fluid and open to re-interpretation. This has led me to share the digital models with a number of artists, and to invite them to create new work from them. My practice and these collaborations explore notions of authenticity and meaning, as the artefacts travel through different media and materials, mutating and transforming along the way.
I guess the theme of travelling, translation from one thing to another, and mutation run through my own life. I was born in Germany, and lived there until my father (who has roots in Lebanon) decided to take up a job in Kenya. I was nine when we moved. Since then moving, learning new languages and feeling my way into new cultures has become a big part of who I am. I moved home about 12 times since leaving Kenya 7 years ago. I speak 4 languages, my close family life in Kenya, Namibia, Germany and my dad travels almost constantly. He is a vet and has specialized on Camels. He does research, which means that he gets to work with nomadic pastoralists: people who move about with their livestock, herding them across dry bush land. I have been lucky to be able to see so many different things.
Sarah Younan (no 6 on the map) has lived in Cardiff for 4 years and says it is "too rainy for camels" here! Find out more about her work at http://sarahyounan.wix.com/
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