Visual literacy and pattern configuration as design paradigm: How visual rhetoric can be used to define social and cultural identity

This paper correlates the areas of comparability on an historical ethnographic juxtaposition of traditionally pieced pattern-making as inherent and encoded social statement, reflected in the eco-cultural identities of two distinct populations from enforced ethnic cleansing and mass migration, and assesses the impact of the initial loss of national pride as enforced upon the oppressed communities, and emphasizes the high importance of retained ethnic identity and cultural heritage for the future as a mnemonic stratagem expressed through visual rhetoric, intrinsically, we uphold Dewey's view that art "expresses the life of a community", and hold these defining subjective priorities as directives for future heritage descriptors. "Every human being lives within a determinate 'cultural pattern' and interprets his or her experience according to a set of acquired forms," states Umberto Eco, in The Open Work (1989).