Project
New Frontiers of Finnish Design
Kustaa Saksi: Nightless Night, from Reveille series, 2015. Photo © Jussi Puikkonen
Design Talks | New Frontiers of Finnish Design, Mar 31st at 6:30 pm at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Tuomas Markunpoika and Kustaa Saksi, two Finnish designers featured in Beauty — Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial will discuss their explorations of design, memory, and making with co-curator and FCINY's Mobius fellow Andrea Lipps.
Lipps is an Assistant Curator focused on contemporary international design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. Expertized in international contemporary design, she organizes exhibitions and publications, contributes to collections, and serves as member of international design juries. She is also a writer and an international lecturer, speaking frequently about contemporary curatorial practices.
Beauty — Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial is the fifth installment of the museum’s contemporary design exhibition series. Beauty celebrates aesthetically innovative design as a creative endeavor that engages the mind, body, and senses. The exhibition is curated by Andrea Lipps, Assistant Curator, and Ellen Lupton, Senior Curator of Contemporary Design. It features more than 250 works by 63 designers and teams from around the globe, including three Finnish designers Tuomas Markunpoika, Kustaa Saksi and Terhi Tolvanen.
Photo © Tuomas Markunpoika
Tuomas Markunpoika's emotionally driven Engineering Temporality was made in honor of his grandmother, suffering from Alzheimer’s. He welded steel rings over a traditional wooden cabinet that was then burnt, leaving behind a lacy sketch of what was now gone. Markunpoika's design comes from a personal place and expands to reflect on what it is to be human.
Kustaa Saksi: Hypnopompic series installation view, Teylers Museum in the Netherlands. Photo © Jussi Puikkonen
Kustaa Saksi creates jacquard textiles with intricate details in multiple materials, inspired by shapes of nature and shifts in the state of consciousness. Moths and flora intertwine into a psychedelic vision in Nightless Night, part of the series Reveille visualizing the imagery of springtime, mornings and waking up from the haze of sleep.
Tuomas Markunpoika: Cabinet, from Engineering Temporality series, 2012. Photo © Cooper Hewitt
New Frontiers of Finnish Design is sponsored by FCINY's Mobius fellowship program. Andrea Lipps' and Cooper Hewitt's Mobius partner in Finland is Design Museum, Helsinki.
MOBIUS
MOBIUS is a fellowship program for visual arts, museum and archive professionals based in New York, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Finland. The program enables transatlantic mobility and collaborative practices and supports long-lasting professional relationships.