Mirroring Dialogue exhibition spotlights design talent from London's African diaspora
A chaise longue shaped like a pelvic bone and vases made from timber seed pods were among the objects on show in Mirroring Dialogue, a London Design Festival exhibition centred around cultural exchange.
The exhibition featured artists, designers and makers "of the African diaspora and beyond", to highlight the diversity of creative talents that can be found in the UK capital.
Curators Tione Trice and Ronan McKenzie wanted to explore how objects can reveal resonances between different cultures and geographies.
The duo assembled works by 15 artists, designers and makers across disciplines including furniture, textiles, ceramics and sculpture.
"We like to create environments where artists can speak to each other, sing to each other, the kinds of spaces that we ourselves want to exist in," said McKenzie, a London-based fashion designer and photographer.
"We're interested in how we live with objects," she told Dezeen.
The focal point of the show was a design created by McKenzie in collaboration with designer Jobe Burns – a chaise longue titled Body Language.
With its bone-like resin form and scooped cushion seat, the design echoes the forms of the human body. The textile is designed to mimic keloid scarring, which is more common on darker skin.
"It's a conversation piece around desire, about holding someone and being held," explained McKenzie.
British-Ghanaian designers Kusheda Mensah and Giles Tettey Nartey also contributed chairs to the show.
Mensah, who recently unveiled her first product for Swedish brand Hem, presented her Desert Raft daybed, a design combining a steel frame with six cylindrical cushions.
Tettey Nartey, meanwhile, unveiled a chair with the same form language as his previously shown Communion table, a design inspired by the process of preparing and serving the West African dish fufu.
London-based sculptor Darren Appiagyei contributed a series of intricately carved wooden vessels, including three of the Banksia Nuts vases he is best known for.
The designer no longer produces these, following a decision to work exclusively with locally felled timber rather than imported wood. They sat alongside pieces from his textural Pyrographic series.
Togolese-British designer Divine Southgate Smith presented her first bronze sculpture in the show, a piece that was created in India using the lost-wax casting technique first developed in West Africa.
Ceramics on show included marbled plates by Lorelle Aboagye, a London-based artist with Zambian and Ghanaian heritage, and geometric vases by Mfundo Mahlangu.
Also one show was a folded metal stool by British-Nigerian designer Zoë Chinonso Ene of Homenká and a collection of combs by Nigerian artist Aisha Olamide Seriki.
Completing the lineup were Myles Igwe, Anne-Lise Agosa, Miminat Shodeinde, Daniel Dzonu Clarke, Beoncia Dunn, Brianna Lois Parker, Zethu Mashika and Nusra Nijimbere.
Mirroring Dialogue was part of the Brompton Design District, curated by New York gallerist Alex Tieghi-Walker unde the theme A Softer World.
In an interview with Dezeen, Tieghi-Walker said his aim was to open up the district to a wider range of voices than typically exhibit in this part of London during the design festival.
"I don't want this to be necessarily the same voices that Londoners are hearing over and over again," he told Dezeen. "I want visitors to the Brompton Design District to be exposed to as many stories, as many perspectives as they can."
The photography is by Andy Stagg unless otherwise indicated.
Mirroring Dialogue was on show from 13 to 21 September as part of London Design Festival. See Dezeen Events Guide for more design events and exhibitions around the world.
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