2017 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Research on Prosopagnosia is limited – one of the reasons the client reached out to us. The data we did receive was the foundation for our creative and its execution. We worked with researchers and academics to ensure that our pieces of art reflected the condition. Just like it, art is heavily dependent on recognition. From the Mona Lisa to Girl with the Pearl Earing, the world’s most beautiful art can be easily recognisable by the faces in the picture. We created portraits that distorted perception on facial recognition and to explore the effects that a hereditary condition can have on cultural and personal identities. So if art reflects life, our idea was to create art that reflects a unique, and remarkable condition that affects millions. But hardly anyone is aware of.

Creative Execution

So limited edition portraits and frames were carefully curated. The paintings conveyed the hereditary aspect, while the distortions used digital-like alterations to represent its effects on contemporary life. The paintings took weeks to depict the condition in a new style, while remaining true to two important aspects: the effect of the condition itself as well as the hereditary aspect. Everything from the wood for the frames to the colours in the paintings, and from the manipulation used to the angles and defragmentation – make the viewer witness the glitch in the brain that reflect what prosopagnosics see when they’re looking at faces. The paintings were placed in major art galleries and exhibitions around the Dubai Art Week festival.

With no budget: Online tests increased exponentially. Research on Middle East subjects rose by 230%. Vital and relevant studies increased to better help the research teams. People got to both learn and inform themselves on a condition they’d never heard about.

Our goal was to bring light to a subject that does not exist in terms of awareness – in the Middle East. That’s why we used the region’s most popular art exhibition. We hijacked art exhibitions and galleries and placed our creative on walls. The placement was surprising and not used in this region before. We didn’t pay for the media, but saw exhibiting our creative as the best way to show off our work – and its message.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Faces are like pieces of art. A universal visual language that everyone can relate to, no matter their ability to recognize faces. So we chose art as the springboard to raise awareness about this condition. The idea was brought to life at Dubai Art Week – the region’s biggest arts event. The portraits of the people had to resemble people of the Middle East, and South Asians. These manipulated paintings were created with the help of academics and patients at Harvard, Dartmouth College and University College London. It was imperative, that just like a normal ad, the viewers would read the description after being stopped by the picture. The description talked about Prosopagnosia, how to find out more about it, and how, even if you don’t have it, you can take a test online – to promote awareness and increase research participants.