designer Archives - Page 3 of 22

Martin Ayala Chavez (DAE)

Tin Ayala graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven with his Cholonisation project, that offers a platform to Cholo artists, musicians and performers. In former Spanish colonies of South America, Cholo used to be a derogatory term for people of mixed – indigenous and Spanish – heritage, but it has become a proud sobriquet for people who embrace the eclectic popular urban culture of the Andean states, as Ayala does. During his EKWC residency, he made two series of stirrup spout vessels that reference pre-Columbian ceramics. One consists of two gold-lustred ceremonial jugs representing potatoes and maize; the indigenous American crops that have become staple foods across the world. The second is made up of ten jugs in the forms of various Pokémon, as a critical reflection on the game’s premiss of environmental exploitation.

Yujin Joung (DAE)

South Korea’s younger generations are struggling with impossible demands from society, that severely impact their well-being. Designer Yujin Joung investigated this obsession with perfection within her own family, tracing it to her grandmother’s trauma from Japanese colonial rule. She passed a desire for safety on to Joung’s mother, who grew up in poverty and stressed the importance of success for her daughter to obtain security. At EKWC, Joung press-moulded two enormous vessels based on Korean moon jars, praised for their ‘beautiful imperfections’. The fragile porcelain walls of the jars cracked when she opened the moulds, and each time she tried to mend them, they still continued to fissure and break under their own weight. To Joung, this is symbolic of life’s uncertainties and imperfections: there will always be cracks, no matter how hard you strive. Might as well accept them, and move on.