Edinburgh College of Art alumna Valentina Lobos was commissioned to create a unique illustration for a bag gifted to students graduating in 2022 to commemorate their time at ECA.
The project was commissioned by Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) with funding from Baillie Gifford. Valentina, a 2021 MA Contemporary Art Practice graduate, was selected for the project after consultation with the curatorial team behind the University Art Collection.
The design
Valentina explained her process for creating the illustration: “I decided to create the design with Graduation as a starting point, rather than a closure, and how vertiginous it feels to face the future when everything seems to have changed during the pandemic.
“I worked with a digital archive I developed for my master's project at ECA, Speculative Flag (2021). For that project, I selected from coats of arms and flags from different countries, generating a digital visual archive for plants, animals, and people for the configuration of new emblems.
“My proposal for this commission was to revisit this digital archive and select a diversity of animals, plants, and people, bearing in mind the Graduation milestone as a threshold on which the graduates stand to face the future.”
On the experience of working on a paid commission for such a special occasion, Valentina said: “It is a clever and creative way to support recent art graduates and maintain a bond or connection with the artists formed at ECA in a reciprocal way. I am thankful for the opportunity to create something for many people, something to be seen and worn, to be given as a present.”
