Around the world, beauty is constantly seen as an ideal worthy of going to great lengths to achieve. But what are the driving forces that lead us to believe in a myth of universal beauty, despite its evolving nature?
Featuring over 200 items, including historical objects, artworks, films and new commissions, this major exhibition at Wellcome Collection considers the influence of morality, status, health, age, race and gender on the evolution of ideas about beauty. We invite you to question established norms and reflect on more inclusive definitions of beauty.
The Healing Pavilion
curated by Janice Li and Emily Sargent.
24 November 2022 – 23 April 2023
Wellcome Collection, London
‘The Healing Pavilion is a new art commission by British-Kenyan visual artist Grace Ndiritu. It radically reimagines what textiles and architecture can do in a museum burdened by colonial history. It is deeply connected to Ndiritu’s ongoing body of work, ‘Healing The Museum’ which she began in 2012.
The installation consists of two tapestries within a site-specific structure, inspired by Zen Buddhist temples in Japan. It is designed to re-activate the museum as a space to encounter, contemplate, ask questions, exchange, listen, share and meditate.
‘The Twin Tapestries’ are based on archival images from Wellcome Collection and the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin, titled ‘Repair (1915)’ and ‘Restitution (1973)’, respectively. They ask what has changed since these photographs were taken and reveal violent pasts and hidden power dynamics at the foundation of Western museology, while reflecting attitudes and practices towards African objects in many European museum collections.
Lined with walnut panels taken from Wellcome Collection’s former ‘Medicine Man’ gallery, which closed shortly after this exhibition opened, the pavilion embodies a physical transformation of the past. Through her practice, Ndiritu asks how we might energetically and architecturally reinvent the role of contemporary museums and transform these institutional spaces.
The exhibition is accompanied by an audio walkthrough and guided meditation from the artist to immerse visitors within the sanctuary-like structure of the pavilion.
The Healing Pavilion, Grace Ndiritu, 2022. © Grace Ndiritu. Photograph: Steven Pocock, Wellcome Collection.
The Twin Tapestries: Repair (1915), Grace Ndiritu, 2022. © Grace Ndiritu. Photograph: Steven Pocock, Wellcome Collection.
The Twin Tapestries: Restitution (1973), Grace Ndiritu, 2022. © Grace Ndiritu. Photograph: Steven Pocock, Wellcome Collection.
Pavilion at London Design Biennale 2021
Role: Co-Curator
Exhibition Venue:
London Design Biennale, Somerset House, London, 2021
Curators: Hong Kong Design History Network (Sunnie Chan, Vivien Chan, Juliana Kei, Janice Li, Mina Song, Jennifer Wong)
Designers: aona (Charles Lai and Ricky Suen), K2 (Teresa Dermawan and Amy Un) and Trilingua (Adonian Chan and Chris Tsui Sau Yi)
Supported by: Sandtable 沙盆推演’ is supported by the Design Trust Feature Grant and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council Cultural Exchange Grant
Project Description:
Sandtable 沙盆推演 is a a poetic digital and physical interactive installation designed to resonate between the physical pavilion in London and the global audience online in real time through double live projections. Captured in sand, visitors’ written strokes will be projected over and put in dialogue with the live feed collected on the digital Sandtable.
The installation invites visitors to develop stories, dreams, and speculations on the histories and futures of Hong Kong as they encounter the urban legend of Ah Kwan Showing the Way, a fantasy concocted by early British colonialists. This will culminate in an ongoing alternative archive, documenting the multiple, interwoven, non-linear histories of Hong Kong generated by physical and virtual contributors.
Throughout its history, Hong Kong has been central to global material networks, where resources, objects and ideas have emerged, passed through, been exchanged, or destined. Nevertheless, design as a force for social agency has thus far been peripheral in the discourse of Hong Kong history and cultural values. With the rapid transformation happening in Hong Kong, design has taken on an increasingly critical role for urgent change resonant with today’s global landscape.
As the city’s future and past reach another crossroad, Sandtable 沙盆推演 seeks to disrupt the linearity of Hong Kong’s history through design speculation. Who has controlled the narrative of the city and how might we redistribute ways of knowing? Play a game of Chinese Whispers with the local legend Ah Kwan Showing the Way as a basis, every day we will regenerate the past and tell a ‘fortune’ for our collective future.
Acquisition and Display
Role: Acquisition Curator
Exhibition Venue: Gallery 1900 - Now, Victoria & Albert Museum, 2021 – Present
Project Description:
As co-founder of the V&A’s Global Narratives Network, I proposed the acquisition of Thai-Indonesian American artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya’s I Still Believe in Our City series for the Rapid Response Collecting Progamme. The public art campaign was commissioned in Spring 2020 by the New York City Commission on Human Rights (NYCCHR) as part of the Public Artist in Residence (PAIR) Program run by New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs. Initiated during her residency, the campaign responds to the growing racism in the form of discrimination, harassment, assaults, and murders directed towards Asian and Pacific Islanders (API) in North America during the Covid pandemic.
Feature on the acquisition: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/i-still-believe-in-our-city
Exhibition
Role: Exhibition Research Assistant
Exhibition Venue:
Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 21 April 2018 – 27 January 2019,
Natural History Museum, Copenhagen, 2019
Design Society, Shenzhen, 2021
Lead Curator: Edwina Ehrman
Project Description:
Fashioned from Nature explores the fabric of fashion - from flowers and insects embroidered on fine linen and sumptuous silks glinting with metal threads to textured rayon animal prints and fascinating new materials made from waste. It celebrates fashion’s innovation and creativity, and the inspiration it finds in nature, but draws attention to its heavy footprint on the planet. Fashion’s processes and insatiable demand for raw materials come at considerable environmental cost, contributing to air and water pollution and the loss of flora and fauna across the globe. Spanning 400 years Fashioned from Nature shows how and why this has happened and the ways in which today’s fashion designers are rising to the challenge to create a better industry that respects and protects the earth and all its inhabitants.
The exhibition tells this story through dress and accessories drawn from the V&A’s collection and loans from leading designers such as Stella McCartney, Giles Deacon and Ermenegildo Zegna. Natural history specimens, taxidermy, film and images add context. A specially commissioned soundscape brings nature into the exhibition space in another way gradually merging birdsong with the sounds of machinery to suggest the increasing impact of human activity as technology advanced and the population grew.
Throughout, Fashioned from Nature highlights the role of campaigners in raising awareness of the negative impact of fashion, from the founding members of the Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds to Katharine Hamnett and Vivienne Westwood. Importantly, it focuses on solutions and draws attention to the exciting interdisciplinary research taking place today which is driving the development of cleaner, less wasteful processes and materials.
At a time when environmental protection and the use and disposal of precious resources are hotly debated topics, the exhibition provides a forum for discussion. Fashioned from Nature asks what we can learn from the past in order to design a better fashion industry for the future. It not only challenges designers to create clothes that are both beautiful and responsible, but also encourages us all to consider more carefully our own clothes.
Display
Role: Curator
Exhibition Venue: Palazzo Michel, Venice Design, Venice Biennale, 2019
Project Description:
Design thinking has long been situated in a world in pursuit of solutions - one obsessed with solving the problems of reality. While innovation is necessary for breaking down systematic and epistemic boundaries, they do not only come in the form of new solutions. As Rory Sutherland observes, most problems in the developed world are in fact matters of perception. Often times, it is more effective to introduce a multiplicity of perspectives. Design has the ability to combat psychological denial - for problems that arise when the reality is too painful to bear - by generating new perspectives, new ways of thinking for sustained impact.
In the face of the Anthropocene epoch, in which irresponsible designs are detrimental to the earth by causing irreversible transformation, and an age of growing reliance of the smooth surface and the virtual, it has become clear that design solutions alone no longer suffice. Contemplation of dichotomous definitions of art and/or design and their relative limiting categorisations hold very little grounds in a world that is in dire need of changes in perspectives.
The group of designers in Provoke, Unlearn, Change: Designing Perspectives respond to contemporary challenges by provoking through speculative, commentary design, to question existing knowledge and patterns, thus to encourage unlearning and give space for impactful long-term changes. They task themselves with a strong sense of social responsibility and question the world around them through the lens of relevance; their designs manifest in distinct approaches in visuality, materiality and ways of expressions. In the form of new materials and processes, social critique interaction, and emotional and ecosophist explorations, they have left the limits of disciplinary boundaries behind and are bringing new perspectives to a world that needs it the most.
Touring Exhibition
Role: Curator
Website: http://dccd.show/
Exhibition Venues:
29.09.–08.10.2017 Vienna Design Week, VDW Debut, Festival Headquarters South
24.11.–03.12.2017 Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Annual Arts & Crafts Fair
13.10.–21.10.2018 Triennale Handwerk+Form (Crafts+Form), Werkraumhaus, Andelsbuch
Designing Craft Crafting Design began with a 4 day workshop held at Werkraum Bregenzerwald, bringing together students from the Royal College of Art, London and craftspeople working in this alpine region. The project explores the collaborative relationship between craftsperson and designer and the shared processes of craft and design. The students at Royal College of Art have been urged to reflect on their position as designers in an urban context, in relation to and often in contrast with, the practices of their collaborators at Werkraum Bregenzerwald, who work within a regional craft community.
The intersection of these young designers and master craftspeople, and the experiences of the Designing Craft Crafting Design team, are told through a journey-led exhibition. Visitors are prompted to relive experiences shared by the designers and curators in Bregenzerwald, shown through the collaborative outcomes, in three thematic stages. Beginning with pieces inspired by the imposing landscape of Bregenzerwald and the region's rich material culture, the visitors will then be introduced to works that explore the philosophy behind the makers’ craft. As understanding between the collaborators grew, visitors will witness, how they challenged and reimagines each other's work through new processes and outcomes.
Craftspeople of Werkraum: Tischlerei Bereuter, Felder Metall, Mohr Polster, Strolz Leuchten, Claus Schwarzmann, Oberhauser & Schedler and Figer Metall.
Designers: Adriaan De Groot, Drew Richards, Felix Pöttinger, Francesco Luigi Feltrin, Heather Kim, Hyunjin Son, Keren Wang, Milo Mcloughlin-Greening, Oliver Burgess, Philipp Schenk-Mischke & Sara Pagani Periti
Exhibition Design: Daniel Nikolovski
Graphic Design: Daniel Kozma
Organisers: Lucas Breuer, Daniel Kozma and Felix Pöttinger of Diaméter Collective
Film and Visuals: Barnabas Toth-Justh and Bálint Bíró
Exhibition partners: Thomas Geisler / Werkraum Bregenzerwald, Diaméter Collective and Royal College of Art
Fundraising Exhibition
Role: Curator
Website: https://london.secret.rca.ac.uk
Exhibition Venue:
Royal College of Art, London, November to December 2018
Project description:
Stewarts RCA Secret is a fundraising exhibition of original postcard-sized artworks by both internationally acclaimed and up-and-coming artists, illustrators and designers.
I co-curated the 24th edition of RCA Secret exhibition of over 1600 pieces of artworks, Including that of Grayson Perry, Bob + Roberta Smith, Jeremy Deller, Nick Park, Sir Paul Smith, Mona Hatoum, Maggi Hambling, etc. and pushed for thematic arrangements that respond to current political issues in the likes of Brexit, Trump, and refugee crises.
Installation
Role: Co-designer
Website: https://www.foodsymphony.org/
Exhibition Venues:
Hello Tomorrow Summit at CentQuatre, Paris, October 2017
ff Food Futures - BioDesign Challenge, White City Place, London, June 2017
Crossmodalism - Storytelling, Method, London, January 2019
Project description:
An immersive sensorial experience that provides a new possibility in understanding alimentary bioavailability. By sonifying spectral data collected through molecular spectroscopy, infrared imaging and analytical chemistry, Food Symphony reveals the internal life of food.
Our design aims to bring new possibilities to sonify the internal life of food, such that people will be able to sense the energy of food, beyond their common usage of the sight, smell, and taste, in a range of audible experience rooted in scientific innovation.
Through molecular spectroscopy, infrared imaging and analytical chemistry, nutritional components could be decoded for each individual food object by placing it on our scanner plate. The data will then be re-interpreted into sound to reveal bioavailability in the specific food object in a consistent, music-like affair.
In the near future, we envision Food Symphony to be experienced in a public social setting, at which a table full of scanner plates could be used to reveal the importance of both biodiversity and bioavailability in food. It will be an engaging, shared experience between the participants through the discussion of their sonic discovery and the creation of their own symphony reflective of their choices of food.
Collaborators: Renata Brehna, Marika Grasso
Composer: Erica Yebyeol Lee
Collection Launch Exhibition
Role: Curator
Exhibition Venue:
8 April 2018 – 15 April 2019, Galleria Maroncelli 12, Milan, Italy
Project Description:
We move around with circumspection on a mental planet of circumvolutions, and from our excesses and passions we bring back the same transparent memories as we do from our travels.
Jean Baudrillard
Keepsakes is an anthology of handcrafted furniture pieces sought after by the ones who know. Inspired by the post-Instagram wanderlust, KABINET’s inaugural furniture collection celebrates the acquired sensibility of the cultured beau monde. Be it an archaeological remain discovered or precious jewels from the 60s sourced in faraway markets, the arbiters of taste are unmoved by trends that come and go but instead bring home one of a kind pieces that will resonate with them for a lifetime.
Through this capsule collection, Daniel Nikolovski and Danu Chirinciuc are offering a vision to the future of furniture making. In their own words, it ‘connects aesthetics and the admiration of lost eras, but most importantly we are offering a way to enrich that lonely corner at your home.’ Being collectors of material nostalgia themselves, they collect and are inspired by naturally formed configurations such as fossils and stones untouched by human hand yet bear witness to millennia of human history. However, rather than romanticist archeological designs, pieces in Keepsakes are a refreshing and forward-looking appreciation of the old and the raw.
Unbound across art and design disciplines, they reimagine fashion aesthetics on an architectural scale and accentuate imperfections of elm burl and deformation of textiles to challenge the ideal of beauty. Comprised of playful forms and colours with daring combinations of materials, every piece in Keepsakes will evoke an aura of future nostalgia in any space they inhabit. Expect to find collectible furniture of topflight Italian craftsmanship and unexplored materiality.
MA History of Design - Dissertation
The presence of Chinese women in the discourse around London urban and cultural history is readily neglected, often assumed to be restricted to theatrical and circus performers, or wives of working labour in Limehouse; but in fact, pioneering Chinese female architects, diplomats, activists, feminist writers, and doctors had resided in London as early as the interwar period, and led active social life in the public sphere. Fashion choices of these Chinese women have not been studied in great length, giving rise to a stereotyped racial filter to mainstream perception of Chinese bodies and dresses, both in the historiography of Chinese in London as well as how Chinese were perceived in the first few decades of the twentieth century. By investigating how these women negotiated their identities through cultural cross-dressing and portrait photography in a displaced urban environment, this research utilises design history to re-examine and reconstruct the currently ambiguous existence of Chinese elite women in London during the interwar period, reclaiming their place in the urban landscape.
Visual representation of photographs cannot be taken at face value as it is often performed with various agenda to achieve both westernisation and self-orientalisation, resistance to orientalism, or self-identification. The class and ethnic background and diasporic experience of the protagonists in the photographs, and their way of cultural cross-dressing pre-migration are inquired into, deconstructing the complexity of being 'modern Chinese women' in the Nanjing decade. The three thorough case studies of Madame Wellington Koo, Lu Bi-cheng, and Phyllis Lin’s act of cultural cross-dressing will be argued as a tool of rebellion against the stereotypical perception of Chinese women in London. Through fashion and portrait photography, they continually reinvented their de-ethnicised, transnational identities. Their way of taking ownership over their bodies and their existence in a foreign metropolis not only defied the expectations at the time, but also supplied an alternative imagination of local/global cultural exchange in a momentous narrative of history.
Object Resurrection is a 4-day workshop that explores how cross-disciplinary methodologies can be applied to bring value to discarded objects. According to the UNU, around 40 million tonnes of consumer electronic products end up in landfill each year. Participants of Object Resurrection utilised thrown-away everyday consumer electronic products in the likes of printers, toasters, and irons, and demonstrated the infinite possibilities of re-imagining and re-creating something entirely new in terms of concept, purpose, function and form for pieces that would have otherwise been regarded as waste.
Small groups of designers, artists and makers were formed, on one hand, to encourage everyone to contribute with their own specialist strength, on the other hand and perhaps more importantly, to expand their creative thinking with new functions, emotions, or contexts. The outcome from each group’s dissection and re-imagination are an eclectic and stimulating collection of designed objects, art pieces and everything in between, challenging the boundary and reach of the current understanding of circular economy.
