Founded in New York by the Lebanese hybrid artist and futurist Samar Younes, Samaritual (Instagram) is an avant-garde studio where art, research, and strategy intersect to envision the future. Her work, which integrates Western and Eastern influences, crafts immersive experiences that push boundaries and inspire groundbreaking learning. Combining artisanal techniques with AI and neuroaesthetics, Samaritual produces visionary cultural artefacts and rituals. The practice spans art, fashion, and design, focusing not just on creation, but on transformation. Younes sees AI as a collaborator, not a replacement, using it alongside traditional methods to explore and celebrate cultural heritage.
What is the significance behind the name “Samaritual”?
“Samaritual” fuses my name, Samar, with “ritual,” embodying creativity as a sacred, transformative practice. It reflects my belief in art and design’s power to create meaningful experiences that become ritualistic, shaping our perceptions and well-being. This name resonates deeply with my Middle Eastern roots, where rituals play a significant role in our cultural fabric.
How has your multidisciplinary background influenced your approach to art today?
My multidisciplinary background in architecture, visual communication and scenography allows me to see connections between seemingly disparate fields. This diverse foundation enables me to create work that transcends traditional boundaries, blending elements from various disciplines to craft holistic, immersive scenarios that engage multiple senses and cultural contexts, particularly those often overlooked in mainstream narratives.
How do collaborations across art, fashion, and design influence your practice and contribute to your innovative approach?
Kaleidoscopic perspectives and multiversal, multitemporal identity expressions brought to life through collaborations across art, fashion, design, and nature are integral to my practice, allowing for a cross-pollination of ideas that often leads to unexpected surreal cultural stories. By working across these fields, I explore how different forms of expression can inform and enhance each other beyond archetypes, envisioning fashion as space and space as fashion, especially in the aesthetics of the Global South connected to the Silk Road. This interdisciplinary approach keeps my work fresh and pushes boundaries, offering new perspectives on indigenous sustainable and expressive futures.
In your collaborations with artists and craftsmen, how do you ensure a balance between traditional methodologies and avant-garde expressions?
Balancing ancestral vernacular methods with avant-garde multiverse expressions is about imagining an interspecies cross-generational, harmonious future, through the lens of the future ancestors. I deeply understand various disciplines’ techniques and their cultural significance, then reinterpret or extend these methods using contemporary technologies. This might involve using advanced computational models to generate new archetypes of forms or patterns, or applying ancestral Global South indigenous techniques to create future ancestor scenarios, always maintaining the essence of our cultural patterns and textures.
In what ways do you think your narratives can influence societal perceptions and contribute to a broader understanding of well-being?
My narratives challenge Global South/SWANA stereotypes by presenting nuanced, multi-dimensional futures that broaden our understanding of well-being. By creating stories and experiences that blend diverse Global South cultural elements with biomimicry, and imagination, I expand perceptions of what’s possible for our region and its diaspora. These narratives reimagine our relationships with natural and synthetic beings, our personal embodied worn environments, and the spaces we inhabit. Incorporating neuroaesthetics, I explore how to envision futures that centre sustainability and multispecies living, demonstrating how art and design can directly impact cognitive and emotional personal and societal well-being.
How did you come up with your Edu Lab “Imaginalogy”?
“Imaginalogy” emerged from my desire to create a space where imagination and methodology intersect, particularly for creatives and organisations from the Global South. It’s a discipline for studying and cultivating imaginative thinking, designed as a playground that challenges Western knowledge systems through a hybrid, multidisciplinary approach. This Edu Lab empowers individuals and organisations to upskill, reskill and cultivate future skills in hybrid creativity, interdisciplinary design and ethno-aesthetic world-building in the age of AI.
What do you think AI offers that traditional art methods don’t?
Advanced computational models offer unique abilities to process and synthesise vast amounts of information, generating unexpected combinations and patterns that spark new creative directions. They can help overcome physical limitations, allowing artists to realise complex visions that are challenging to execute manually. However, I see these technologies as collaborators rather than replacements for traditional methods, offering new ways to explore and celebrate our cultural heritage.
What’s the most unexpected or unusual source of inspiration you’ve ever had for a project?
One of my most unexpected sources of inspiration led to the CreatureKin project. Inspired by my personal experience with breast cancer, I created digital caretakers designed to foster emotional and social support through wearable digital art. These beings aim to ease stressful healthcare experiences by infusing warmth, imagination, and artfulness into clinical routines. CreatureKin serves as a catalyst to restore balance during difficult times, facilitating a playful and empathetic reconnection with our bodies on our own terms. This project exemplifies how personal challenges can spark innovative solutions that blend technology, art, and well-being.
Through Samaritual and Imaginalogy, I strive to create work that not only challenges perceptions but also invites people to imagine and participate in shaping more inclusive, sustainable futures for our region and beyond. My approach bridges cultural narratives, technological innovation, and human well-being, with a particular focus on the Global South and SWANA perspectives. By offering courses, collaborative opportunities, and strategic consulting, I aim to empower others to harness their creativity and cultural heritage in innovative ways, contributing to a more diverse and nuanced global creative landscape.
I then apply it to real-world challenges, bridging the gap between visionary thinking and practical application.
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