Terra Cotta #1 | “Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival“

XXII Triennale Milano

Curators: Paola Antonelli, Laura Maeran, Ala Tannir, Laurie Mandin and Erica Petrillo

March 1 – September 1, 2019

About the Exhibition:

“Broken Nature” highlights the concept of restorative design and studies the state of the threads that connect humans to their natural environments––some frayed, others altogether severed. In exploring architecture and design objects and concepts at all scales and in all materials, Broken Nature celebrates design’s ability to offer powerful insight into the key issues of our age, moving beyond pious deference and inconclusive anxiety. By turning its attention to human existence and persistence, the XXII Triennale will promote the importance of creative practices in surveying our species’ bonds with the complex systems in the world, and designing reparations when necessary, through objects, concepts, and new systems. Even to those who believe that the human species is inevitably going to become extinct at some point in the (near? far?) future, design presents the means to plan a more elegant ending. It can ensure that the next dominant species will remember us with a modicum of respect: as dignified and caring, if not intelligent, beings.
 

About Terra Cotta #1:

“Designer Talia Mukmel confects a series of bowls from sand and flour baked into hard shells in a home oven. When cooked at high temperature, starch molecules released from the flour act as binding elements cementing together sand grains. In their first iteration, the bowls were given shape through the use of threads crisscrossing the mixture of primary materials. A development pf the series has led the designer to replace threads with metal wire for better structure and control. In the oven, the flour bakes into unpredictable organic forms, expanding in the cavities of the metal support, allowing for unique pieces to materialize each time.”

*taken from “Broken Nature” XXII Triennale Catalogue