Dezeen Showroom: cushions designed to “embrace you like a blanket” characterise the Lunetta sofa, created by furniture brand Leolux and Dutch design practice Studiopepe.
Lunetta is the first time Leolux and Studiopepe have collaborated on a design. The brands aimed to create a relaxing, comfortable sofa with a geometric and informal appearance.
Piping runs along the sofa’s edges
The sofa features a soft, loosely filled cushion that forms the seat and two arm cushions, contrasting the harder back cushion.
“When you sit down, it embraces you like a blanket, with the loose-filled arm cushions adapting instantly to your body,” said Leolux.
Lunetta comes with an optional side pocket
Piping outlines the edges of the sofa, and the back cushion can be upholstered in a different fabric from the rest of the sofa.
“The back and arm cushions are all the same height and are accentuated by the stylish and prominent piping that runs straight across the cushions and provides a geometrical counterpart to the soft, creased look,” said Leolux.
The sofa is also available with a side pocket that can be used to store phones and remotes.
Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen’s huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.
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Chaos, control and contradiction inform the artist’s practice in Queens, New York
This February, Dana James moved into a new studio in Queens, New York and although she hasn’t been there long, the room already speaks to the artist’s work. The open-floor, white-walled space is clean and tidy, devoid of unnecessary clutter and scant in its decorative objects. But upon a closer look, a certain disorder prevails, from the faded purple stains on the floors to the pile of canvas scraps on the ground. Much like the space, James’ pastel-colored paintings feel cohesive and orderly until surprising dark splashes and nonconforming lines disrupt the neatness. In her work as well as studio, subtle juxtaposition captures the eye.
The process, James tells us, begins with size. “We [the artist and her two dogs] walk over here early in the morning and paint—all day, every day,” she says. “I usually have some sizes in mind and some color palettes in mind, but I sort of plan on them changing. So I usually kind of deliberately and accidentally plan something, knowing that it’s going to change. I will do one size but I end up usually cropping it or perpetuating it, like I might do a large painting and then crop out the best part which means you’ve got to stretch it, un-stretch it, cut it out and re-stretch it. Also, I am often adding different panels.”
From start to finish, James honors fluidity in her process. Perhaps this is why her work feels harmonious and balanced—despite the many contradictions concealed within. James, who has been featured on the future-forward art market Platform and is currently preparing pieces for this year’s EXPO Chicago, employs clean-cut ruler lines and geometry within her compositions alongside off-kilter strokes and surprising splashes.
“The Healer (Beauty Apprehended)” by Dana James
“When I do the multi-panel pieces, it’s a lot about the dissonance in the edges, where everything’s sort of meeting and it’s off and there’s a dialogue happening. I think composition is really hard. If you don’t have a powerful composition, the painting’s just kind of unsuccessful. That’s also what often leads me to cut them up, collage them together, because I want it to be organic. I don’t want it to be an obvious choice, but I want it to flow. I want it to contradict and to flow at the same time and that’s a difficult path to follow,” says James. It’s an exercise in both chaos and control.
“The Princess Warrior” by Dana James
When it comes to color, James continues the through-line of opposition, positioning gentle, light hues against deep, dark pops. “I’m really interested in color,” she says. “That’s a primary theme for me. I want to get away with pushing really pretty colors but then offsetting them, and I want to see how many I can put on one piece but I also don’t like to overload color. They’re very colorful, but there’s usually three main colors in each piece.”
Walking around reveals another layer of James’ color palette as well as the magic of her work: an iridescence that shines from the canvas as sunlight makes certain strokes appear to change color. “The glow,” the artist explains, “I really liked because it was, first of all, autonomous and not always there and kind of popping up surprisingly. But it’s also sort of magical and kind of how nature is very vast as a child and magic-oriented. I also have a dragonfly theme. There are triangle wing shapes. I’ve always liked the dragonfly as a symbol of change.”
“Her Afterglow Was Amber” by Dana James
She continues, “I liked the idea of the phosphorescence that you’re in the essence of the dragonfly and fireflies and that kind of thing, but simultaneously the work is also supposed to be extremely feminine and beautiful and then offset by these dark, dirty explosions. In that way they’re a lot about contradiction and being female—and how it’s usually a contradiction to be female and it’s not one way. I’m into this almost garish like glowing pink and pastels and then juxtaposing those with this kind of matte dirty canvas.”
The effect is wondrous, adding another layer of complexity within the seemingly straightforward work. “They’re really not about one thing, but they kind of originate from memories and nature but also optics; how our memories can change and be autonomous. I wanted this nostalgic, fuzzy feeling around them, and some of them are somewhat landscape oriented. Sometimes I don’t even think of myself as a totally abstract painter,” says the artist. With the works’ tight, organic composition and profuse inspirations, it’s easy to see why.
I’m at a point in my life where I’m team stools over chairs, and I truly believe stools deserve to be given way more credit than they get. Stools are often overlooked, maybe because they occupy minimum space, and aren’t really overbearing. But these traits are what make stools so great in my opinion! I mean, they’re compact, and a great space-saving furniture option for our modern homes. They are also super portable. And, a stool design I recently came across, and would love to get my hands on is the Drum stool by Teixeira Design Studio.
I’ve seen a lot of stool designs, and let’s be honest some of them do tend to get predictable. But the Drum stool is anything but predictable. The Drum stool is minimal, elegant, stackable, and not to mention sustainable! At first glance, the Drum stool looks like a cute little wine cork to me. But when you dig deeper, you realize it has much more to offer than its adorable good looks. Teixeira picked materials such as cork and wood to build the stool, instantly rating it high on sustainability. Cork was used to create the seat, while wood was the material of choice for the legs.
The cork seat features round trimmed surfaces, giving it a rather fun and playful shape. The trimmed seat is further supported by slim wooden legs that effortlessly blend with the seat, creating a furniture piece with a cohesive and harmonious personality. I love how the sleek legs deftly slide into the grooves on the cork seat! The cork seat is comfortable and inviting and provides a grip while handling, so the stool is quite easy to move around and place in different positions. As mentioned earlier, the Drum stool is stackable, which means you can stack up multiple drum stools one on top of the other, making them super easy to store away when not in use.
The Drum stool’s aesthetics are quite warm and minimal, allowing it to perfectly merge with the interiors of different living spaces. It’s the kind of versatile furniture piece that you can slyly slide into your living room, bedroom, or even your home office – it just fits right everywhere!
A card-sized EDC holds a lot of merit in a world filled with countless multitools that stuff in every possible utility in a small form factor but ultimately bloat up to a size that defies the whole point of being pocket-friendly.
In comes the Tiny Survival Card that strikes a balance between getting the maximum number of utility tools and maintaining a minimal form factor. The credit card-sized EDC fits in your wallet and solves most of your adventure needs without ever restricting your daily life. I’m sure, Bear Grylls would want this feather-weight EDC handy on his crazy escapades in unknown territory.
The wallet-sized everyday carry multitool is designed keeping in mind the ease of carrying, so that even casual outdoor enthusiasts have one handy with them. Named the Tiny Survival Card, it comes with 17 emergency field tools including 3 sewing needles, 6 small fishing hooks, 2 mini harpoon, 1 dual-edge saw, 1 micro drill, saw blades, a knife and arrowhead to attend to any kind of need in the outdoors.
This is one of the smallest ( just 0.0025-inch thick) yet most comprehensive survival kit made for everyday use and good enough for tough situations too. Being crafted by a pro in survival strategies, the hardened 302 stainless steel multitool (corrosion-resistant) sits on a magnetic base from where any tool can be quickly snapped off and then put back easily. Those tools for cutting or other needs can also be sharpened without any hassle to retain the same edge for years to come. Clearly, this EDC fills intersection of the Venn Diagram of users who need serious gear for outdoor activities and of users who enjoy having a EDC they can count on in case of any emergency in urban life.
Designer Samuel Ross speaks to Dezeen about his move into fine art, his future in product design and how his vision “has never been to see everyone wearing my T-shirt” at the opening of his exhibition Land.
For his first-ever UK solo show Ross, who designs luxury menswear line A Cold Wall and is a prolific fashion and product designer who has worked with brands including Louis Vuitton, is exhibiting paintings and sculptures at the White Cube gallery in Bermondsey, London.
Samuel Ross’ inaugural UK solo show is on at the White Cube. Above photo by Ollie Hammick, top photo by Theo Christelis
“It was that period of Covid-19 when everyone had time to think, ‘what type or mark or imprint do you want to be remembered for, what do you want to express across your body of work?'” Ross told Dezeen.
“We always assume that we have a lot of time on our hands, but the loss of Virgil Abloh and the wider losses occurred during Covid-19… I myself got really sick over covid, but I also got married and had a child,” the artist said.
“All these disassemblances and reassemblances of life happened in that period, and I wanted to just focus on expressing feeling, emotion and gesture,” he added.
“In a different life, I probably would have been an architect”
For the White Cube show, called Land, Ross designed a space for his abstract paintings and sculptures that utilises more than just the walls and floors on which they are displayed.
Land is a combination of the artworks, a soundtrack composed by Ross, a scent that fills the room and was inspired by his grandmother’s home in Brixton, and the entrance to the space itself.
“I designed the door opening to be a lot slimmer and a lot taller, so when you cross between this small ‘cabin’, you get hit by a wave of sound; I scored the sound and you enter the space and it envelopes outwards,” he said.
“It’s funny – in a different life or a different system, I probably would have been an architect,” Ross added. “This was an opportunity to play with architecture.”
The painting 9 Hours is named after the flight time to the Caribbean. Photo by David Westwood
Ross uses a base of oriented strand board (OSB), plywood and duck canvas on which he creates his textured, tactile paintings, which are made by tilting the boards to mix and layer the paint.
In a nod to the exhibition’s wider focus on work, heritage and society, he mixed functional industrial paints with more traditional acrylic paint.
This can be seen in the colour-saturated painting 9 Hours, which was named after the time it takes to fly from Britain to the Caribbean.
“There are these moments of lived experience meeting psyche, geography and materials that determine how we view class, which is why part of the performance of painting is to use emulsion and industrial paints and mix them with acrylic, use aerosol and OSB and plywood,” he said.
“They’re all part of the conversation surrounding industrial materials, industrialised bodies, geography, and access to material, access to location.”
Lens of exhibition “tilts towards the Black British experience”
The exhibition is part of a wider examination that Ross, whose parents are both of Caribbean descent, had undertaken of his own background.
“I think I’ve been contesting the word Black a lot more,” he explained.
“Because it has no physical location by its nature – it’s a decentralised moniker, which makes sense historically. But the problem is that doesn’t do much for the origin of one’s self.”
“It has a fleeting diasporic nature to it but when you question ‘who am I, where am I from’, you probably have to come forward with further specifics,” he added.
“This is where the notion of British Caribbean has been at the heart of a lot of what I’m trying to focus on, looking at the Black British art movements of the ’70s and ’80s.”
The designer created the exhibition with a focus on the whole space. Photo by Theo Christelis
Through the exhibition, Ross hoped to create an immersive experience that would convey something of his own background, while also speaking to the wider human condition.
“The artworks are fundamentally about expressing the human experience, with a lens that tilts towards the Black British experience,” he said.
As Ross has become an established name in the fashion and design industries, he is also helping emerging designers through his Black British artist grants, which is in its fourth year and is primarily self-funded.
“It doesn’t get as much public share as it should now in particular sectors because they need what’s hot at that moment, but the programmes will continue to go and we’re still adding new partners yearly,” he said.
Ross’ paintings, like Candles Burn, feature a mix of traditional and industrial colours. Photo by David Westwood
Creating art is different from the way in which he had worked as a designer, Ross said.
“It’s a little bit of an exhale to just paint, just sculpt, and it feels incredible to understand the medium I want to express myself in across the long term,” he said.
“With product and industrial design, there’s this spirit where curiosity poses itself through challenge and problem-solving,” he said.
“This tends to have you veer into different categories or classes of goods, which is really exciting – to say, ‘what’s my perspective on the credit card design? What’s my perspective on an automobile? What’s my perspective on the chair?'”
“And that’s incredible; it’s almost like a Rubik’s Cube and you’re literally problem-solving,” he added.
“But within the arts, I felt like I’ve always been a painter, it just took me some time to take the leap.”
“There’s only so much product people need”
Ross had also become disillusioned with “some of the macro issues within the fashion sector”.
“If you think about the system design of what’s happening at a supply-chain level, it’s quite tedious,” he said.
“That’s not to do with creativity and expression, it’s to do with engineering and supply-chain management,” he added. “I can’t ignore the – it’s not an apathy that it brings, it’s not a frustration, it’s a disappointment.”
Steel sculptures nod to Ross’ background in product design. Photo by Theo Christelis
In addition, he had begun questioning the mass-production aspect of fashion.
“I travelled to Guangzhou in China in maybe 2019 and went to a supplier mill, and I looked at a bucket of nylon in liquid form in front of me,” he said.
“You look at that and you think to yourself, maybe this isn’t the right place to spend efforts in,” he added. “Also, consumer fatigue is a big deal – I think there’s only so much product people need.”
Instead, his vision for A Cold Wall now is based on historical placement and curatorial elements.
“My vision in fashion has never been to see everyone wearing my T-shirt or my jacket, I think that’s a bit reductive,” Ross said.
“In that sector, I want to make beautiful garments that have something to add historically. The V&A acquisition last year of the Converge Gilet meant a lot to me because it was where I intend conceptual garments to go.”
In 7 Hours, black hues contrast against warm yellows and reds. Photo by David Westwood
In the future, Ross sees himself focusing mainly on art and design.
“At the moment, I operate in three fields – art, and design with a little d and a big D – and I think I have capacity to focus on two,” he said.
“Of course, I’ve still got time for fashion, but I feel like there’s more of an urgency to speak in the design remit and within the fine art remit,” he added.
“The fine art aspect is something I’ll do forever. Design I intend to be practising for the next 15-20 years.”
Land is on show at White Cube Bermondsey from 5 April-14 May. For more events, talks and installations in architecture and design visit Dezeen’s Events Guide.
A sequinned Stella McCartney bodysuit and styrofoam cups made from mealworms feature in this roundup highlighting innovative design projects that make use of bioplastics.
Bioplastics offer an alternative to traditional plastics, derived from renewable natural materials such as plants as opposed to petroleum.
While the debate about end-of-life wages on, brands and designers are continuing to explore how bioplastics can be used to wean the world off fossil fuels.
Read on for 10 projects from the Dezeen archive that explore different uses for bioplastics:
British fashion brand Stella McCartney recently launched a sleeveless body suit embellished with bioplastic sequins made from tree cellulose by material innovation company Radiant Matter.
The sequins were developed as a substitute for petroleum-based plastic embellishments, which the brand says can contain carcinogenic chemicals. Radiant Matter’s alternative is made from renewable cellulose extracted from trees, which has a crystalline form that reflects the light and provides the product with a sparkling quality.
Last Christmas, Copenhagen-based Natural Material Studio created a bespoke bio-textile pouch to function as a gift-wrapping alternative for Calvin Klein products during the holiday season.
The material, called Procel, was developed by Natural Material Studio and is made from a protein bioplastic mixed with natural softeners and pigments. The pouches were designed to be reused and can alternatively be recycled. According to the studio, the product is also biodegradable.
Informed by kelp structures found along the coastline of Malibu, California, the Kelp Mini Clutch is a 3D-printed bioplastic bag created by Black Panther costume designer Julia Koerner for her brand JK3D.
The bag uses bioplastics derived from corn and soybeans for its construction and is 3D-printed to achieve a ribbed, lamella-like form reminiscent of the underside of mushrooms.
Great Wrap is a bioplastic clingfilm alternative, which was designed to break down in a landfill or industrial compost within 180 days.
Australian biomaterials company Great Wrap produces the clingfilm by extracting and plasticising the starch found in waste potato peels. The resulting thermoplastic starch is then compounded with used cooking oil and a starchy root vegetable called cassava to change its polymer structure so it can be used as a stretch film.
Music and sustainability collective Evolution Music released a 12-inch vinyl record made from bioplastic following a four-year development process. This was needed to identify a base polymer that acts similarly to traditional PVC but without harmful and emissions-intensive ingredients.
“It is a robust, ecologically secure, compostable material created specifically to act and sound the same as PVC-derived vinyl,” Evolution Music CEO Marc Carey told Dezeen.
Hoping to give waste bioplastics a new life, this collection of desk accessories by office brand Bene is made from discarded polylactic acid (PLA) food packaging. The collection’s pen pots, trays and phone stands were designed by London studio Pearson Lloyd and 3D-printed by additive manufacturing studio Batch.Works.
According to Batch.Works, the production process produces close to net-zero emissions and once the products are no longer needed, they can be recycled or reclaimed by Bene under a take-back scheme.
Design studio Doppelgänger has developed an alternative to polystyrene foam made from chitin – a biopolymer that is sourced from the exoskeleton of mealworms – a turned it into cups, foam peanuts and other packaging.
The material breaks down in soil in a matter of weeks, according to the studio, while offering shock-absorbent and water-resistant qualities that rival its petroleum-based counterpart.
BreaZea is a 3D-printed room divider made from a scent-infused bioplastic. It was created by design studios Crafting Plastics and Office MMK, who presented the object at Salone del Mobile in 2021.
The room divider uses one of Crafting Plastics’ Nuatan bioplastics, which are made from a blend of PLA and PHA polyester. BreaZea has a natural scent reminiscent of bread and maize, in an attempt to mimic the way that fresh wood can add a pleasant aroma to an interior.
In 2021, fashion designer Philip Lim and industrial designer Charlotte McCurdy teamed up to develop a petroleum-free dress covered in bioplastic sequins.
McCurdy created the sequins by binding algae together using heat and placing it in a custom mould to cure and solidify. The bioplastic was cast into sheets and then cut out into tusk-shaped sequins, which were used to cover an A-line dress designed by Lim.
Bioplastic Skin is a food packaging made from boiled animal hides that was designed to dissolve in hot water and biodegrade in a matter of weeks.
The project was developed by Icelandic designer Valdís Steinarsdóttir, who wanted to find new ways of reusing the waste produced by slaughterhouses. As part of the same project, the designer also created Just Bones – a sturdier material made from ground animal bones, which she turned into a series of vases.
Climbing plants will gradually cover the screen of iron bars that surrounds Nevogilde house in Porto, Portugal, which has been completed by local studio Anarchlab.
Located in the city’s Largo de Nevogilde neighbourhood, the home occupies the footprint of an old stone house overlooking a once-pedestrianised square, which is now a busy traffic junction.
Nevogilde is a house in Porto by Anarchlab
To deal with this change in condition, Anarchlab turned the Nevogilde inwards, presenting a closed facade to the north and creating a fully-glazed, U-shaped ground floor to the south overlooking a large garden.
“The starting point was always the simplicity of the solution, the strong connection with the garden and wide and generous social areas for relaxing times with family and friends, all articulated with the pre-existence of an old stone house along a quiet square,” said the studio.
It is wrapped by a screen for climbing plants
“Uncomfortable, noisy and cold windows to the north were closed and ceased to exist, [while] large continuous glass windows were created on the ground floor facing south, embracing the garden across its entire width,” added Anarchlab.
Inside, Nevogilde comprises a spacious living room on the ground floor that is connected to a kitchen and dining space, while six bedrooms are housed across the two floors above.
An exposed brick wall with a fireplace and concrete bench forms a backdrop to the living room and extends out into the garden through a full-height window.
The first-floor bedrooms, which sit on either side of a cut-out at the centre of the home that is planted with a tree, are set back slightly to create two external terraces.
These terraces are wrapped by the screen of ribbed iron bars, which are overlooked by the main bedroom on the second floor and will eventually be covered with climbing plants to help conceal the sleeping spaces.
There is a spacious living room on the ground floor
“The main bedroom emerges from the facade as a glazed volume that floats over a private terrace, protected by a huge structure of delicate vertical lines of ribbed iron, which will serve as the basis for a vertical garden to develop across the south-facing facade,” explained the studio.
“This structure, supported by exposed concrete pillars, raw but delicate, will serve as a solar and privacy filter, mediating the close relationship with the garden below and with the sun, rain and wind to the south,” it continued.
It sits on the footprint of an old stone house
While Nevogilde’s ground floor interiors are rougher and darker, the first floor has been given a minimal finish of white walls and pale wooden floors.
In this exclusive video produced by Dezeen, Resolve Collective discusses its latest architectural installation at the Barbican, which takes the form of an interactive landscape to be used for community organisation.
Titled Resolve Collective: them’s the breaks, the installation uses materials that have been recycled and foraged from cultural institutions across London and the south coast of England to create a series of structures within the Curve Gallery at cultural centre Barbican.
Interdisciplinary design studio Resolve has filled the gallery with ramps, platforms and plank-like furniture, created from waste materials such as concrete breeze blocks and discarded packaging.
The pieces are designed to be interacted with and can be used as seating, social spaces, or stages for speakers.
The installation is housed in the Barbican Curve Gallery. Photography by Adiam Yemane
The Curve Gallery’s walls are also lined with annotations documenting the installation process, as well as a library bookshelf containing books on architectural and social theory for visitors to browse.
The installation was designed to act as a forum for thought and activism and is accompanied by a programme of events, workshops and parties.
The aim of the exhibition was to question the role of social institutions by offering a non-hierarchical alternative space that is open to interpretation, as well as showcasing a circular and community-led method of design that utilises upcycling and material redistribution to reduce waste.
Visitors are encouraged to use the space to organise community events. Photography by Adiam Yemane
Resolve Collective was founded by Melissa Haniff and brothers Seth and Akil Scafe-Smith. Their work focuses on community-led design and uses art, architecture and technology to address social issues within local communities.
The collective wanted to create a space that felt accessible to all, and that could facilitate wider conversations about infrastructural and socio-economic reform.
“It’s actually thinking quite differently about what we would understand to be a gallery or a museum, and thinking quite critically about what that looks like outside of those four walls.” said Seth Scafe-Smith.
Resolve Collective was founded by Seth Scafe-Smith, Akil Scafe-Smith and Melissa Haniff. Photo by Adiam Yemane
Unlike a usual exhibition, visitors are invited to touch, climb on and interact with the pieces in the Curve Gallery.
“In our work, we always want people to become part of the installation and the exhibition as a way to remove the hierarchy between the artist and the audience,” said Seth-Scafe Smith.
Visitors are invited to use the pieces as furniture
The installation is accompanied by a programme split into four seasons, running from the end of March to mid-July. Each season gathers a series of artists, musicians and local organisers to reflect on the themes of infrastructural practice, knowledge sharing, and joy.
During the final season of the installation, the materials that make up the installation will be given away in what the collective describes as a “closing-down sale”.
Throughout the show’s run, visitors will be able to claim wares for their own use, giving the waste materials another life.
“Institutions often throw away or dispose of the contents of old exhibitions. We were interested in how we could intercept some of those waste flows,” Akil Scafe-Smith told Dezeen.
Contributors from Resolve’s network will take part in a series of events and parties in the space. Photography by Adiam Yemane
“You’ll be able to claim a material that you need for a community project or another art installation” explained Haniff.
“[And] you’ll be able to mark different materials that you would like to take home using a custom-made Resolve stamp,” said Akil Scafe-Smith.
“We would like people to take away material, but we’d also like people to take away a kind of moment where they get to share and support some of the organisations that we are really inspired by and try to imagine a new future in which we organise and support people in a different way,” Seth Scafe-Smith added.
Writer and curator Su Wu has joined Dezeen Awards 2023 as a judge. Here, she selects five projects that best reflect her work.
Mexico City-based Wu aims to examine “forms and concepts drawn from art and design history to explore utility, capability and social conditions”.
“As a curator, I approach my work with conceptual rigour, an anarchic approach to exhibition-making and sympathy for subversion,” she told Dezeen.
“The best compliment I’ve ever received about an exhibition was from a cultural minister, who told me that ’16-year-old girls were very excited about the show’,” Wu continued. “I am probably just trying to break my own teenage heart.”
N Plus One magazine art editor Wu is currently working on a project informed by her 2021 exhibition Elementos Vitales: Ana Mendieta in Oaxaca, which was curated in collaboration with Mexican studio MASA.
She also has an exhibition scheduled for 2024 that explores the philosophy of art and artistic expression.
“I was asked by the Mexico City-based exhibition platform MASA to co-curate their inaugural exhibition of Mexican design. At the time it just felt so wild to put art and design together in a dilapidated old mansion and dare to call it an exhibition.
“As an immigrant, I believed that a sense of belonging could be achieved through shared yearning rather than being confined by borders or political boundaries.
“We wanted to create a context of the artists who came to Mexico in the 20th century – like [American sculptors] Isamu Noguchi and Ruth Asawa, [painters] Leonora Carrington and Ibrahim El-Salahi, [French writer] Andre Breton, [conceptual artist] On Kawara, [performance artist] Ana Mendieta and [architect] Francis Alys.”
Copyright The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection. Image courtesy of Galerie Lelong & Co.
Elementos Vitales: Ana Mendieta in Oaxaca, Mexico, 2021
“I curated an exhibition [in collaboration] with MASA displaying work by [Cuban-American artist] Ana Mendieta in Oaxaca.
“It was the first time these significant works, including the first Silueta film work, were exhibited in the location where they were created.
“We paired Mendieta’s work with five seating installations by contemporary Latina or Mexico-based artists, designers and architects, including architect Frida Escobedo and artist Solange Pessoa.
“It was an exhibition that combined art and design and suggested that rest, reflection, access and vantage points should be taken seriously. I’ve been gratified to see since then a few instances where museum seating, more generally, seems less of an afterthought.”
“Across three sites at Rockefeller Center, including the former post office and the promenade in front of 30 Rockefeller Plaza , [we created] an installation of works by Mexican and Mexico-based artists and designers.
“There were nearly 70 pieces, a rousing return of Mexican art to Rockefeller Center, nearly 100 years after artist Diego Rivera’s Man at Crossroads was destroyed.
“I was encouraged not to mention Mexican Rivera’s lost mural, so instead, I made an entire exhibition about it. The exhibition was a survey of gaps: the unrealised projects, false starts, failed love affairs and accidents that also comprise a history of art and design.
“One piece I’m particularly honoured to have helped realise was an installation by the artist Pia Camil around the flagpoles surrounding the ice skating rink at Rockefeller Center, the artist’s largest work to date. Instead of national flags, she used the flagpoles as infrastructure to hang clotheslines, a recognisable object of human care, which has long since been illegal in Manhattan.”
Photo by Alejandro Ramirez Orozco, courtesy of Studio IMA
Tea Ahorita at Studio IMA, Mexico, 2023
“Tea Ahorita is a teashop I opened at the design gallery Studio IMA in Mexico City this February.
“Sometimes the premise of an exhibition is quite modest, but I’m working through ideas, in this case about fidelity in tradition. I am interested in the absurdities and generosities that come with ritual and craft.”
“The Mexican artist Lucas Cantu developed a full-room installation that offers a ceremonial way of serving tea, rather than a tea ceremony. I also made him a tisane, a wild-foraged mint blend with ‘pericón’, a herb with regenerative properties that were mentioned in the Aztec codices.”
Photo by Alejandro Ramirez Orozco, courtesy of Museo Anahuacalli
Nunca Solo: Alma Allen, Museo Anahuacalli, 2023
“A big part of my work is writing exhibition monographs and texts for artists and this is my most recent piece. It’s important to me to not think of projects as works of individual genius but as the whole community of people involved.
“Nunca Solo features 29 pieces by [American sculptor] Alma Allen, curated by Karla Niño de Rivera at Museo Anahuacalli in Mexico City – I wrote about it as a favour for Alma, my muse.
“The exhibition and the works in it have influenced my subsequent thinking about objects, and who they are for, and perhaps our overemphasis on an audience of conscious human beings.”
Dezeen Awards 2023
Dezeen Awards celebrates the world’s best architecture, interiors and design. Now in its sixth year, it has become the ultimate accolade for architects and designers across the globe. The annual awards are in partnership with Bentley Motors, as part of a wider collaboration that will see the brand work with Dezeen to support and inspire the next generation of design talent.
Dezeen Showroom:Italian brand Italamp has launched Piola, a collection of suspended lighting by designer Danilo De Rossi crafted by weaving gold-coloured metal with glass rods.
De Rossi designed Piola as a decorative feature, which Italamp says is ideally suited for “placement in the centre of a space”.
Italamp has launched a collection of suspended lighting called Piola
While the metal has a golden finish, the glass rods are “embellished with a texture of microbubbles” that is enhanced by the two internal LEDs that pass through each one.
The system is modular, meaning adjustments can be made to the width and height of its supports depending on its desired placement.
It is made from glass and metal rods
“The designer started from the concept of a luminous diaphragm,” said Italamp.
“A perfect expression of Italamp’s deep design and material know-how, it interprets glass and light in an unprecedented way, in an encounter between state-of-the-art technology and craftsmanship.”
Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen’s huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.
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