By Randa Hadi Whether you’ve never left your hometown or have veered far away from where you were born, belonging is something we all seek, and maybe something we are in constant search of. Your sense of belonging can take different forms, whether it’s through friendships, maps, archives, or digital communities, we form our identities even when we’re straddling two worlds (Al Abas, 2019). Belonging can exist on several scales: micro, meso, and macro levels.  Belonging Permeates Life in Various Ways Muhammad al-Idrisi spent most of his life creating cartographic maps of the Arab world. Although his true intentions for making the map are not clear, it’s safe to assume that it was driven by wanting the Arab world to be represented the way an Arab saw it. I first came across these maps when Sherine Salla presented them in the Against the Grain Fellowship at Futuress. I was so intrigued by their form, directionality, and non existing political borders. North is pointing down, and South is pointing up; a small, yet beautiful detail in …

By Victoria Rabelo Gerson Belonging is a topic, word, a feeling, that I’ve been exploring in my own work since my early beginnings in graphic design in high school. I still look back at the short book I designed titled “Home” using photos of my travels through Brasil, where my family is from, as an important artifact. In this book, I documented my thoughts and feelings during my trip to Brasil and wrote about feelings of belonging several times. I wrote about how family and friends from my mother’s home country made me feel so accepted, even after not seeing them for 5 years. How everyone let me in, making me feel like I was where I belonged. I wrote about how “never before had I felt like I’d seen my mother for who she truly is until I saw her in the place she so obviously belongs (Figure 1).” And about “the assurance of knowing who I am, where I came from… feeling like I belong in this place and in this skin.”   When …