MDes Communication Design School of Design
Natasha Boys
My practice is rooted in socio-political discourse, particularly focusing on intersectional feminism. Through image-making, site-specific intervention, and publication design, I confront bias, both overt and deeply embedded. My work critiques inherited power structures and examines how the societal treatment of women, shaped by deeply embedded systems of control, remains fundamentally unchanged.
I aim to challenge familiar narratives and spark conversation, creating space for reflection and the possibility of change.
I Beg Their Pardon! is a body of work rooted in the Scottish witch trials and the legal pardon those tortured and executed under the Witchcraft Act of 1563 are yet to receive. Using this history as a foundation, the project draws parallels between historical discourse and contemporary treatment of women, informed by critical feminist theory.
Projections
Projections is a photographic series taken at Mugdock Drowning Pond. The work examines women’s positions in society through a critical feminist lens, employing site-specific, narrative-driven, text-based interventions. Initially anchored in the Scottish witch trials—the victims of which are yet to receive justice—the project evolved into a wider commentary on the enduring oppression of women.
The Drowning Pond served as a symbolic stage, historically used as a threat; weaponising fear to enforce socially imposed gender roles. By projecting text into a landscape historically associated with the oppression of women, the work brings conversations about historical injustice—and its contemporary manifestations—into public space.
Book
The publication provides context to the photographs from ‘Projections’. It aims to
evoke the experience of being at the Drowning Pond during the interventions, while also reflecting on my discovery that the pond—widely believed to be a site of witch
trial executions—historically functioned as a symbolic threat, used to enforce socially prescribed gender roles through fear and control.
I Beg Their Pardon!
On International Women’s Day 2022, Nicola Sturgeon offered a posthumous apology to those prosecuted, tried and executed under the Witchcraft Act 1563, calling the trials a ‘historic injustice’. The apology was the result of a campaign by The Witches of Scotland Group, which, in addition to the apology, called for an official pardon and a national monument for all those persecuted during the trials.
This piece is an imagined monument, inspired by forms from woodcut images of the witch trials and filled with text from various sources describing the importance of this topic and its contemporary relevance. As Sturgeon put it, “They were not witches, they were people, and they were overwhelmingly women.”
Zine
The zine revisits the I Beg Their Pardon! installation, recontextualising it in a more readable format, and allowing for more effective dissemination. In documenting the column’s structure, this publication preserves its visual quality while reflecting how overlaid voices can mimic censorship; words buried beneath each other and made unreadable. Here, those words are given a new space to be heard.
