Osman Khan — Amy S. Chen

Osman Khan:
Road to Hybridabad

EXHIBITION

In Road to Hybridabad, Osman Khan invites visitors on an (im)migrant’s journey to Hybridabad: a fictional borderland where folklore, memory, and contemporary technology intersect. Visitors chart their own course through the exhibition using a gallery guide and map, encountering fantastical figures drawn from South Asian, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and immigrant folklore that Khan reimagines through contemporary technology. Entirely commissioned, the exhibition needed strong graphics that functioned both as storytelling devices and navigational tools while reflecting Khan's fantastical, layered world.

ROLE
Graphic Design & Vinyl Installer

FIELDExhibition
YEAR2024
LOCATIONMASS MoCA

DELIVERABLESIdentity, Wall Text, Gallery Guide, Banner

In the first gallery, visitors encounter an animatronic djinn that demands a spoken password found only in the side reading room. The face of the djinn is modeled after Viscount Cyril Radcliffe, the British lawyer infamous for drawing the Partition Line — the border that split Pakistan from India.

The Hall of Djinn where visitors meet a modified coin-operated Buraq (a hybrid being that, in legend, took Muhammad to Jerusalem) sitting on top of a recreation of the Apollo 11 moon lander.

A sound system mounted in the bed of a pickup truck emitting a droning bass at a broken wall. Referencing the “technical vehicles” used in guerrilla warfare, and the horns that — according to scriptures and songs — brought the walls of Jericho tumbling down.

Visitors with Scheherazade 2.0, an AI who listens and retells immigrant stories.

The Re-Reading Room, an allegory of the formation of knowledge and language, and where visitors can find the djinn’s password.

WALL TEXT

The exhibition title, literally meaning “Road to Hybridtown,” is a combination of a pun on Hyderabad (a name of cities in both India and Pakistan); travel stories such as Orientalist comedies Road to Zanzibar, Road to Rio, etc.; and the ideas of cultural hybridity. Keeping these themes in mind, I collaborated closely with the artist and curator to pursue a wall text design that alludes to the beginning of a choose-your-own adventure.

Drawing from Road to... movie posters, vintage travel postcards, and early video game title screens, I explored visual references that implied adventure, nostalgia, and cultural ambiguity. I especially took note of the similarities all the references share: flamboyant typography framed by multicolored borders. I experimented with typefaces that balanced these references before we ultimately settled on a modified version of Le Murmure, a calligraphic typeface by Jérémy Landes, that struck the right balance of all the themes. During installation, I carefully adjusted the scale and placement of the title so it established a loud, fantastical first impression without competing with the djinn head in the same gallery. A complementary typeface, Nitti Grotesk, was selected for the body text to reinforce the exhibition's technological themes.

Road to... movie posters from the 40s and 60s

Travel postcard

The first Final Fantasy video game opening title

Rejected typography

To further emphasize the entrance as the beginning of a journey, Khan installed an active split flap display on top of the didactic text. The display cycles through real American major cities and eventually lands on “Hybridabad.”

COLOR

Using color as an extension of Khan’s installation and a navigation tool, a dark blue wall paint was chosen to help immerse visitors in the exhibition and direct their attention to the light blue djinn head. Three additional colors—orange, teal, and gold—were selected for the vinyl text after deliberating on all the other colors Khan used in his works. Rather than using the same colors as the exhibition's largest installations, I sampled the accent colors from small metallic wall ornaments found throughout the exhibition. As a result, the wall text reads less as an overlay and more as another decorative element within the exhibition, allowing the artwork and not the graphics to remain the primary visual focus.

GALLERY GUIDE

Accompanying the exhibition was a foldout gallery guide that helped visitors navigate the galleries while providing deeper context for Khan's references. Because the exhibition was entirely commissioned, photographs of the completed installations did not yet exist during the guide's design. Working closely with Khan, I instead pulled fragments and patterns from his digital sketch collages to represent each major stop along the visitor's journey, transforming preliminary artwork into a visual language that reflected the exhibition's layered storytelling.

To reinforce navigation, I developed a color-coded system based on the six exhibition zones, selecting colors and motifs directly from Khan's sketches. These colors connected the guide to the figure numbers throughout the text and corresponding object labels in the galleries, allowing visitors to orient themselves as they explored. The guide further expanded Khan's visual world by layering SketchUp diagrams, figures from Mughal and Persian miniatures, and 90s computer window graphics into a map that felt as imaginative and hybrid as the exhibition itself.

TYPE3-panel map foldout
SIZE6 x 8.5 in. (finish)
17.875 x 16.75 in. (flat)
PAPER60# Opaque Text

BANNER

Another challenge was developing a promotional banner that gave visitors a glimpse of the exhibition before the installation was complete. Working from Khan's digital sketch collages, I explored several compositions featuring different folkloric figures, using each iteration to discuss with the artist and curator which image best captured the exhibition's central themes. We ultimately selected an illustration of two djinns chasing one another, creating a playful, dynamic composition that foreshadowed the animatronic djinn head in the first gallery. The color palette and surrounding motifs in the illustration also connect to the wall text and gallery guide, unifying the exhibition materials and further emphasizing the exhibition's themes of folklore and transformation.

Rejected banners

RESULT

Together, the exhibition graphics created a cohesive visual language that guided visitors through a nonlinear exhibition while extending Khan's world beyond the artworks themselves. By drawing directly from the artist's sketches, ornamentation, and visual references, the graphics became part of the exhibition's storytelling and visitor experience rather than simply describing it.

RELATED PROJECT: EXHIBITION CATALOG

Following the opening of the exhibition, I continue to work with Khan and the curator on a 200-page exhibition catalog. The hardcover catalog includes essays from Alexandra Foradas, Gunalan Nadarajan, and Juliette Singh; images of the exhibition and the installation process; and a complete list of readings from the Re-Reading Room.