Public Program

  • Etceteras: feminist festival of design and publishing
    Isabel Duarte, Maya Ober, and Nina Paim
    Organizers
    Casa Comum, Porto University, Porto
    Oct 05, 2023 to Oct 07, 2023
  • GRANTEE
    Isabel Duarte, Maya Ober & Nina Paim
    GRANT YEAR
    2023

Visual identity for "etceteras" festival, designed by Joana & Mariana, 2023. Courtesy the festival organizers

Feminist literacies are collective fabulations. It is through the interlocking efforts of writers, editors, publishers, designers, artists, printers, booksellers, distributors, translators, researchers, librarians, smugglers—and so many others—that feminist ideas move around. In doing so, they move us—and create movements. Etceteras celebrates the many hands circulating feminist texts. Taking place at the Casa Comum of the Porto University, this open to all and free-of-charge festival offers lectures, workshops, roundtables, performances, film screenings, and more. Some of the confirmed guests include editor Sharmaine Lovegrove, historian Bec Wonders, designer Parasto Backman, designer and musician Ece Canlı, artist Hilda de Paulo, and writer Raquel Lima—amongst many others. At the heart of its program is a publishing fair, where visitors can uncover the legacy of feminist literacy through independent books, magazines, journals, zines, posters, artworks—etceteras.

Isabel Duarte is a graphic designer, researcher, and curator based in Porto and London. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Brighton with an FCT merit grant. Her current research, “Beyond the canon: Feminist revision of graphic design history in twentieth-century Portugal,” engages with the intersections of graphic design history, feminist methodologies, and decolonial studies of cultural production, focusing on Portuguese graphic design history and social context. In 2021 she cocurated the exhibition Errata: a feminist revision of Portuguese graphic design history, held in Gabinete Grafico, Museu da Cidade, Porto. In parallel, Duarte develops the Errata podcast, documenting and reflecting on issues facing women designers in Portugal through conversations with thinkers, curators, historians and designers about their experiences and work. She has extensive experience in editorial design, having worked as a designer for the magazines ArtReview, ArtReview Asia, Eye Magazine, and other editorial projects.

Maya Ober is a designer, researcher, and educator, based between Basel and Buenos Aires. She holds a master’s degree in design research from the Berne University of the Arts. As a Swiss National Science Foundation grantee, she is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Social Anthropology of the University of Bern, Switzerland. Her research focuses on the feminist practices of design education emerging at the seam of activism and the institutional. She published many texts on the intersection of design, feminism, and politics. In 2018 she coinitiated the Imagining Otherwise Program at the FHNW Academy of Arts and Design in Basel, Switzerland, exploring transformative design pedagogies. Her passion for education brought her to teach internationally in Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, Mexico, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Maya codirects FUTURESS alongside Nina Paim.

Nina Paim is a Brazilian designer, editor, curator, and educator based in Porto, Portugal. Her work revolves around notions of directing, supporting, and collaborating. She has coinitiated, curated, and worked on a number of exhibitions, workshops, and events, including the 2012 Escola Aberta in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Taking a Line for a Walk at the 2014 Brno Design Biennial in the Czech Republic; and Department of Non-Binaries at the 2018 Fikra Design Biennial in the United Arab Emirates. She was the program coordinator for the 2018 Swiss Design Network conference Beyond Change, and coedited its resulting publication Design Struggles (Valiz, 2021). A three-time recipient of the Swiss Design Award, Nina cofounded the feminist platform for design politics FUTURESS in 2020, which she codirects.