Maiwenn Castellan's Liam mailbox
Female designers are in the spotlight at the Design Exchange’s newest exhibit: Capacity. Originally staged at Bookhou last January for the Toronto International Design Festival, the multidisciplinary show is curated by Katherine Morley and Erin McCutcheon as a way to raise awareness about female designers without making a big fuss about it. “The idea was to let the public discover for themselves that it was all women,” says Morley. “We didn’t want to be discounted as faux feminists.” Really the show is more about the underlying theme of capacity: “What is your capacity to understand?” ask Morley and McCutcheon on the show’s website. “To withstand? To produce? To learn? To love? Is your cup half full or is it half empty? How much of who you are is what you collect?”
The pieces on display — by ten female practitioners — are a cross-section of the contemporary design scene, including industrial, graphic, textile and product design pieces that are inspired by the concept of capacity. Industrial designer Maiwenn Castellan’s circular Liam mailbox (pictured above), for example, dances between its defined physical space (the interior of the box), and “capacity for endless possibilities,” through the daily mail. Meanwhile, in The Universe Will Not be Typeset, a series of three framed screenprints, graphic designer Ayla Newhouse attempts to represent the universe using language she understands. “Our capacity to understand the universe is relative to how we understand our own personal universe,” she says in her artist’s statement. “It is at once an incomplete and a comprehensive perspective on a subject that has no finite black or white.”
Michelle Ivankovic's Maker Sofa
Furniture and product designer Michelle Ivankovic transforms exercise balls from an active accessory to a lounger’s accomplice in her Maker Sofa. The retro yet creepily organic seat is comprised of variously sized exercise balls covered in green velvet upholstery with brass buttons.
The line-up also includes product designer Ange-line Tetrault, craft artist Arounna Khounnoraj, multidisciplinary designer Nathalie Nahas, architect Joy Charbonneau and furniture designer Kirsten White as well as pieces by the show’s curators, artist and designer Erin McCutcheon and ceramicist Katherine Morley.
Lodestar by Erin McCutcheon
Alphabits and Pieces by Nathalie Nahas
Joy Charbonneau's Hydrological Map of Canada
The Universe Will Not Be Typeset by Ayla Newhouse
Capacity runs until October 16 at the Design Exchange []. And don’t miss the Petcha Kutcha-style panel discussion, Design and Gender, taking place on August 29 — participant designers from Capacity will discuss what the phrase design and gender means to them.
