domino tiles for magalie mobeite 
in collaboration with jan van eyck academie, 2024

This project began with a game and became a code.

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In June 2024, Atelier Barb collaborated with artist Magalie Mobetie to create a series of biodegradable domino tiles for Jan van Eyck Academie Open Studios. The tiles were made from eggshell-based bioceramic and engraved according to Mobetie’s intentionally designed domino tile patterns.

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The work forms part of MANIFEST, a wider research project led by Mobetie that reimagines the collective memory of the transatlantic slave trade through healing, resistance, and ancestral knowledge. Domino tiles — once used to encode medicinal herbal remedies — were long banned in Guadeloupe and other colonies, feared by colonizers as tools for subversion. Mobetie’s designs draw from those histories and from personal memory, passed down from her grandmother.

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The final tile series serves as both artwork and archive — a tactile record of resistance, remembrance, and the quiet transmission of care across generations.