What is Escapism?

Escapism is the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy. Escapism can be mental diversion from unpleasant or boring aspects of daily life, typically through activities involving imagination or entertainment. It can also express a desire to explore and learn new things.

I am constantly looking for ways to escape , to avoid one thing by engaging in something else. Consequently, I was prompted to think to myself- there has to be an explanation for this strong desire to disengage- perhaps a term that summarizes this tendency. This is when I thought of the word escape and what it truly meant in this context. A desire to escape or avoid reality, that is, our current circumstances by creating the illusion of an alternative reality.

My visual explorations into the subject resulted in a series of physical artifacts and books exploring and showcasing my research, findings, experiments, investigations and responses with regards to ESCAPISM and how we engage with it.​ I wanted to use my maximalist design language to reinforce the escape and also wanted the artifact to be non linear for the most part, as is our experience with escapism.

The final physical artifact is a collection of collapsable spreads illustrating the responses using text, image, colors and visual elements. Each page unfolds to reveal more information. I decided to create a container that houses all of these pages as a single physical artifact: like an escapism box, an object that allows for a different kind of escape.

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