The exhibition focuses on the multiplicity of practices that range from clothing and textile design to musical instruments and immersive experiences, focused on functionality, Argentine creativity and also aiming to create solutions in the context of current social problems and environmental.
This year, Argentina is also the only country to participate as “Championed Partner” (main sponsor), a category that allows outstanding visibility among key players in the sector and specialized media that can visit the different rooms of the residence intervened by the Animaná brands. , Blackñandú, Casa Capital, Cabinet Óseo, Chapanegra, Mercedes Costal, Eter Studio, García Bello and Kaly Gryb, Matara, Illari, Matriz Design, Maydi, Oruga, O-Guitars, Leticia Paschetta, Milagros Pereda, Nicole Tursi, Velasco and the The White Lodge gallery.
“What Argentina has is that it has a series of talents and creativities that for many years were not visible inside or outside, or even were not recognized, because the language or labels were lacking,” the director of Communication of Argentina told Télam. Content and Digital of the London Design Festival, Gianfranco Cicco, an Italian-Argentinean based in the United Kingdom.
The designer celebrates and presents design as a force that can change any discipline or industry, and not just the aesthetic part focused on the object. “London offers a very curious platform where people are less interested in where you come from and more interested in what you have to offer,” says Cicco, who is also an industrial engineer, graduated from the Technological Institute of Buenos Aires (ITBA), and did a master’s degree at the Politecnico di Milano and has worked as director of initiatives such as the World Business Forum and Social Media Week.
For Cicco, who lived in Milan, Amsterdam, Madrid, Tokyo and is now based in London, the most important thing is that Argentina “has many cultural and intellectual resources with which today it can begin to propose solutions and that it be part of this festival with so much diversity of thought and disciplines, also forces us to retell those stories better”. And he notes: “Out there are the clichés, like Argentina is football, tango, wine or barbecue.”
Sustainability and the environment are an important dimension in the development and production of the designs presented at the Festival. The White Lodge bursts into this framework, a Cordovan gallery specializing in environmental art and directed by the curator Georgina Valdez Cristofani, who presents a selection of two artists who promote environmental sustainability with pieces made from local materials.
This is Claudia Santanera, who intervenes several pieces that make up a living space in basketry with caranday palm weaving and works with a village of artisans from Copacabana, a town in northern Cordoba where ancient techniques with this material are safeguarded.
“Through weaving, they tell their story and my job is to stage those stories. I am like an intermediary who at the same time gives visibility to their work, investigating shapes and sizes, rediscovering and connecting with contemporary art,” says Santanera. to Telam.
Also part of the game is the shipment of Sheila, who works with experimental sculptures and objects made with compostable materials from household waste such as coffee, eggshells, yerba mate or turmeric.
“What we propose has to be in tune with human needs and with the development and well-being of people, and this festival interests us because we believe that it has a look at design that is closer to the look of art,” says Valdez. Cristofani.
In clothing design, the Maydi, Milagros Pereda, Animá and García Bello brands also work with materials that care for and respect the environment, with wool, organic fabrics and natural fibers from different regions of the country.
Anima, uses sustainable and timeless production processes in collaboration with producers and artisans from vulnerable communities to preserve their artistic traditions. While Juliana García Bello recovers obsolete objects such as garments that are no longer used and gives them a new life by returning them to circularity and applying a methodology known as “upcycling”, which she learned from her grandmother. The garments are inspired by the spirit of Argentine Patagonia and her firm is currently working in the Netherlands.
Also in the exhibition is the architect Leticia Paschetta, who intervened in the residence’s garden with a unique work that fuses art, design and play, with a minimum of raw materials, creating a spatial experience through a concept called “playful landscapes” , inspired by the need to create spaces of freedom that stimulate movement.
And in turn, Gastón Luna, from Casa Capital, a young industrial designer from Córdoba who presents an innovative coffee table, which is both a speaker but does not have any cables, emits music through a vibration system and connect to bluetooth or any app.
For his part, the curator Wustavo Quiroga, president of the IDA Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to research, recovery, conservation, dissemination and enhancement of national design, displays for this occasion a series of iconic projects chosen according to their historical relevance. “A submission was prepared that has two blocks: a historical part and a contemporary one. With IDA we work on historical relevance to support the current submission curated by Argentine Creative Experience”, he highlights in dialogue with Télam.
The Foundation has ever-expanding collections, made up of documents and objects related to the main fields of industrial, graphic, clothing and textile design, as well as theory and management.
According to Quiroga, they work above all on the antecedents of the history of design that frame the great Argentine referents who emigrated and who had an impact on international circuits, such as the case of the architect César Pelli in the United States, the publicist Carlos Bayala, in London or the designer Paula Zuccotti, who worked on futures research for companies like Google.
“The work of the IDA Foundation is to make this point to start creating a story of Argentine design at an international level, something that has never happened until now and that somehow allows the new generations, when they enter the market, to support themselves with a brand country,” he stresses.
“This is something that Italy and France have already done and that Argentine design could perfectly have, given certain qualities that the country has such as its tendency towards entrepreneurship, with an incredible territorial diversity and with a very particular cultural and productive matrix, in addition to great intellectual talents, thinkers and strategists who emigrated and who work very well in other contexts,” explains Quiroga, an industrial designer by profession.
“There are some key pieces that are very important at the level of curatorship or history of museum design. One is the BKF, which is a seat that was made in 1938, it is super famous and it is in the MoMA collection in New York,” he exemplifies.
For Quiroga, the key is also in the export of knowledge services and high-quality products. “Today it is not necessary to export only one part or raw materials, it is possible to export intellectual services. The strategy points to that place”, he specifies.
“The important thing here in the first place is the participation of Argentina, with which the Festival will pay attention to the content that comes from this country. It is the first time that Argentina participates and that it is one of the main sponsors of the Festival , with which it is on the official grid”, he highlights and notes that with the Foreign Ministry, what could be done for the first time, is to work on a country brand strategy related to design. “That is unprecedented, especially because it never expires,” he says.
In 2019, the Festival, which turns 20 this year and runs until September 25, welcomed a record 600,000 individual visitors from more than 75 countries before the pandemic.
By Gabriela Albernaz.-
Source: Ambito
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