Designers from the Flatland — CECILIA CASABONA

Milan Design Week,
2023

Designers from the Flatland

_{DOPO?: Via Carlo Boncompagni, 51/10
Ortica Studio: Via Enrico Nöe, 3}

“Designers From the Flatland”
An exhibition about Dutch design without any Dutch designers.

Seven international designers based in The Netherlands come to Milan as representatives of the current reality of Dutch design, between working conditions and cultural contradictions. From 18 - 24 April 2023, during Milan Design Week, the spaces of DOPO? and Ortica Studio come together to host a satellite exhibition, accompanied by a public program that spreads across the two locations.

One exhibition, two connected work spaces, seven designers. A setup that offers the opportunity for two young milanese spaces to collaborate, mix their different audiences, and to confront each other with an international scene.

Designers from the Flatland contextualizes and ties together the work of NL based design practitioners with a foreign background. Designers whose practice and object-making mirror their condition as foreigners; who have embraced the Dutch design lessons while adding their own perspectives to balance, contrast, and enrich the discipline, and by doing so, creating a space in-between Dutch design and their original cultural backgrounds; an in-between space which enables to nourish a critical distance to reflect on the discipline from within and from the outside at the same time.

"Foreign designers and artists living in the Netherlands contribute significantly to the visibility of Dutch art and design in the international contemporary art world" say curators Cecilia Casabona and Ramón Jiménez Cárdenas. "Therefore we feel the importance of nurturing newborn realities such as the exchange between art and design. This in order to consolidate alliances between young creative scenes without borders, where rather than competition we foster collaboration."

The exhibition doesn't shy away from encompassing other contemporary issues that Dutch based design practitioners face. Even though the Netherlands lends itself as a design and as a financial hub it is no longer the creative paradise it once was. Under these shared working conditions, the designers brought together by Cecilia Casabona and Ramón Jiménez Cárdenas rely on methodologies such as exhibiting research, performance, and audience involvement in order to render their practices into habitable spaces.

"We have noticed a growing interest and turn in our colleagues towards performative practices to engage directly with the public. Therefore their mediums range from performance to site-specific installation" say the curators.

Looking at these projects, the turn towards performative research dismantles the traditional concept of design in both the Milanese and Dutch contexts. "This way of working stems from the urgency to create and reclaim one's own space, a space not only for work, but where one can live and inhabit" conclude the curators.

The exhibition program includes performances which invite the public into direct engagement with the projects and with the designers behind them.

Participating designers:
Bruno Baietto (Uruguay)
Guenn Ramon Gustina (Curaçao)
Ramón Jiménez Cárdenas (Mexico)
Georgina Pantazopoulou (Greece)
Marta Ríos (Spain)
Scylla (Bianca Schick, Italy & Sofia Topi, Greece)
Studio Watershore (Yu-Ching Chiang & Ying-Ting Shen, Taiwan)

This exhibition was co-curated together with Ramón Jiménez Cárdenas.
Graphic identity by Juliette Mirabito.

_{This exhibition and public program are supported by Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie NL.}

^{Closing party and publication launch at Ortica Studio}

^{Ortica Studio, Bruno Baietto’s installation}

^{DOPO?, Ramón Jiménez Cárdenas‘s installation}

^{DOPO?, group exhibition}