From 20 November to 6 December 2025, Noor Riyadh, the world’s largest light art festival, returned with over 60 installations by 59 artists from 24 countries, presented across six major sites including Qasr Al Hokm District, King Abdulaziz Historical Center, stc Metro Station, KAFD Metro Station, Al Faisaliah Tower, and JAX District. Curated by Mami Kataoka, Sara Almutlaq, and Li Zhenhua, the 2025 theme, ‘In the Blink of an Eye,’ reflected Riyadh’s rapid transformation and positions the festival as a platform for public participation and artistic experimentation. In an exclusive interview with designboom, Noor Riyadh’s director Nouf Almoneef, takes us into a journey of light and art, touching on the festival’s mission to bring art to the people by making it accessible in everyday life and creating meaningful, memorable moments for everyone who engages with it.

‘Noor Riyadh is now in its fifth edition, and what keeps it meaningful is how deeply it belongs to the people of this city. We built it as a platform for creativity – for artists and for audiences who wanted to see themselves reflected in the works. Every year we rethink the locations so that art becomes part of daily life, whether that means placing installations in historic courtyards, public gardens, or metro stations. Our mission is always to bring art closer to the people,’ begins Nouf Almoneef, Director of Noor Riyadh.

Between the lines by Abdelrahman Elshahed | image © designboom

‘making Riyadh one of the world’s most livable cities’

Noor Riyadh’s most defining quality is its accessibility. By distributing artworks across historic zones, cultural districts, and newly launched metro stations, the festival transforms Riyadh into an open-air gallery. The curatorial strategy ensured that encounters with light art happen not only in traditional art venues but within places of everyday movement, commuter corridors, public plazas, pedestrian routes, and family gathering areas. This approach aligns with Riyadh Art’s long-term mission to integrate creativity into the capital’s urban fabric and create ‘everyday moments of joy,’ a principle emphasized across the program’s strategic documents.

‘By choosing different locations each year – parks, heritage sites, gardens, metro stations – we create a network of public spaces that are connected through light; this is how we make the festival accessible. That sense of belonging is essential to our vision of making Riyadh one of the world’s most livable and creatively engaged cities,’ continues Nouf.

Liminal Space Air-Time by Shinji Ohmaki

the six locations create a geographic journey through riyadh

Beyond its large-scale installations, Noor Riyadh sustains a citywide public program that includes workshops, talks, performances, and family activities such as Printed Stories, Dancing Threads, and Stories from the Shadows—all designed to engage audiences of different ages and backgrounds. This community-driven programming complements Riyadh Art’s broader achievements, which include over 6,500 community engagement activities and 9.6 million visitors since launch. By inviting residents not only to observe but to participate, Noor Riyadh positions public art as a shared civic experience rather than a spectacle.

The 2025 theme, ‘In the Blink of an Eye,’ reflected Riyadh’s rapid evolution from heritage sites like Qasr Al Hokm to the sleek infrastructure of the newly launched metro network, showcased in festival documents as symbols of the city’s forward momentum. The artworks amplified this narrative: kinetic sculptures visualize movement, light projections reframe architectural history, and metro-based installations mirror the rhythms of urban life. Together, the festival’s six locations created a geographic journey through Riyadh’s past, present, and future.

‘We chose locations that reveal how the city is expanding – its heritage districts, its cultural centers, its futuristic metro lines. When visitors move between these sites, they experience the story of Riyadh itself: a place honoring its past while building bold new futures. For many people seeing these changes, the artworks help make sense of the transformation by offering moments of reflection within the movement.’

Sliced by Encor Studio | image © designboom

As part of Riyadh Art, one of the four original Vision 2030 mega projects, Noor Riyadh plays a pivotal role in shaping the cultural infrastructure of the capital. Permanent installations, educational programs, and public-realm activations continue to expand the city’s creative footprint. The festival’s long-term legacy lies not only in its scale or global recognition but in how it fosters civic pride, cultural exchange, and everyday access to creativity.

‘I think Noor Riyadh after 2025 has already been recognized internationally and locally, but recognition is not our only goal. What we want is to create meaningful, memorable moments for people, for visitors, for artists, for curators, for residents. As Riyadh continues to evolve, Noor Riyadh will grow with it, building stronger connections between communities and art. This is how we imagine the future: a city where creativity is a shared language, part of daily life, and part of who we are becoming,’ concludes Nouf Almoneef.

Light Float Down Like A Feather by Wang Yuyang

Atmospheric Seeing by Studio Above&Below

Between Light and Stone by Nebras AlJoaib

Center by Ivana Franke | image © designboom

Synthesis by László Zsolt Bordos-Christophe Berthonneau | image © designboom

Troppo Fiso! by Traumnovelle

Luna Somnium by Fuse | image © designboom

event info:

name: Noor Riyadh 2025 | @noorriyadhfestival

organization: Riyadh Art

curation: Mami Kataoka, Li Zhenhua, and Sara Almutlaq

dates: 20 November – 6 December, 2025

location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The post noor riyadh sheds light on how public art can create a more livable, connected city appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Paola Pivi’s exhibition I don’t like it, I love it at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) brings together one of the most ambitious bodies of work in her thirty-year practice, pairing long-imagined pieces with major new commissions that inhabit the Brutalist architecture of the museum at full scale. Conceived through extended dialogue with AGWA’s curatorial team, the show pushes, as Pivi says, ‘the entire boundary,’ expanding her ongoing investigation of joy, urgency, and the evolving conditions of freedom today. ‘I am one of the luckiest human beings and artists, given the chance to be able to freely express myself,’ the Italian artist tells us, ‘something that today we are losing at a perceivable speed.’

Across the exhibition, on view until April 26th 2026, Pivi’s signature balancing of the playful and the existential becomes a framework for rethinking how we inhabit the world. Her fluorescent feathered polar bears, joyful in movement yet tied to global warming, which she insists on calling ‘global warming rather than climate change’, emerge from what she describes as ‘respect for life’ and ‘treasuring movement and the joy to be here.’ Her approach dissolves the distinction between delight and responsibility. ‘For me, joy comes from caring about life. It’s all connected. There is no separation,’ she notes. This belief that art expands perception underpins her entire practice. ‘I know that art can change the world because art can change.’ Below, designboom speaks with Paola Pivi about the making of I don’t like it, I love it, the importance of freedom, and why the ‘impossible’ is often just the beginning.

Installation view at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), Perth, 2025 — Love addict (2025) by Paola Pivi, composed of 999 molded resin trays filled with glycerine and food colouring; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. © Paola Pivi | image © Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

in ‘I don’t like it, I love it’ scale, light and play collide

The largest of these new pieces is a giant inflatable comic strip cell suspended in the towering lobby of the museum.  Drawn from an early Big Nate vignette by Lincoln Peirce, the piece transforms line and paper into volume and air, opening a dialogue about the power of images to catalyze imagination. For Pivi, the cell encapsulates the generative spark that travels between artist, artwork, and viewer. ‘All that energy that is stored in this little cell… exploded in his Big Nate work worldwide, and it also inspired me,’ the multimedia artist shares with designboom. ‘That speaks about the power of aesthetics, the power of art.’

This sense of stored energy appears again in the second new work, a suspended field of 1,000 transparent trays filled with colored liquids on AGWA’s rooftop level. The installation responds directly to the intense natural light entering the building and to Pivi’s experience living in Hawai‘i.‘It all came together while I was living there, with the colors and the light — the life of the planet,’ she comments. For her, the opportunity to realize these long-held visions speaks to a broader principle: ‘The more we are given chances to express ourselves without limitation, the more the world can go forward.’

The exhibition also showcases her iconic feathered polar bears, which emerged when she moved to Alaska in 2006. For Pivi, their joy and their urgency are inseparable. ‘For me, joy comes from caring about life. It’s all connected.’ Her bears, playful in posture yet tied to the realities of global warming, exemplify the tension that runs through her work: a belief that art can open space for empathy, imagination, and possibility without prescribing what viewers should think. ‘I’m not going to tell people what they need to think… I want people to tell me what they think. I hope people will be better than me and teach me.’ Scroll on for the full interview with Paola Pivi.

Installation view at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), Perth, 2025 — Love addict (2025) by Paola Pivi, composed of 999 molded resin trays filled with glycerine and food colouring; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. © Paola Pivi | image © Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

in conversation with paola pivi

designboom (DB): This exhibition at AGWA is one of your largest projects so far. When you first walked into the building, what did you see or feel that shaped the works you created for this space?

Paola Pivi (PP): Oh well, I created the show, or actually a different version of the show that then changed along the way, well before seeing the space, this extraordinary piece of architecture. The amount of space is an important feature of τthat building. It’s really dynamic and generous with the amount of space. In certain galleries, definitely in this museum, we do not feel constricted because we have different areas with different lighting. It all feels very varied and very complex and dynamic, and it’s like there is movement in the art itself. I designed the show with the curator Robert Cook well before entering the space, just by conversations for a long time. Basically, Robert, the curator, and the director Colin were ready to engage with me, the artist, to do the most ambitious show we could do, not only in terms of size of the installation or the scope of the production, but also in the decision of which artworks to present to the world today, to bring forward the dialogue of art. To really try our best as a team, from every point of view, to do a show that would push the entire boundary.

Installation view at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), Perth, 2025 — Love addict (2025) by Paola Pivi, composed of 999 molded resin trays filled with glycerine and food colouring; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. © Paola Pivi | image © Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

DB: One of the new commissions is a giant inflatable comic cell, inspired by your own journey from studying chemical engineering to becoming an artist. Why was it important for you to bring comics into this show, and how do you see them connected to creativity and freedom?

PP: Two of the artworks are two dreams come true for me. They are artworks that I have been working on and hoping to make for years, and now AGWA is commissioning these works and giving me a chance to see them in reality. They are extremely important for me, and I am one of the luckiest human beings and artists, given the chance to be able to freely express myself, something that today we are slowly losing. Not slowly, actually, we are losing it at a perceivable speed. So in this instance, I’m given the freedom and the chance to express myself, and these two artworks are a form of expression for me. One is a cell of comic strips, one cell basically enlarged and created as an inflatable. The black line of the marker on paper, which then becomes a black line printed on the paper of magazines of the comic strips, becomes black inflatable material, and the white of the paper becomes empty space. And so this enormous cell or vignette will be hung in the middle of the museum’s towering lobby, a space with balconies and a large spiral staircase that goes up, filled with sunlight entering through windows. I expect it to be a very impressive installation.

The cell comes from comic strip artist Lincoln Peirce. It was one of the four cells, the last of the four cells, of the first story that Lincoln published many years ago. And it was the first time he published the character Big Nate, who then went on to become a very famous book character. I did not choose the cell because I knew it was Big Nate. I chose the cell just by random searches on the internet, and I found it so meaningful. Then I realized that it belonged to Lincoln Peirce and that it was the seminal work of that very prolific body of work. All that energy that is stored in this little cell not only exploded in his Big Nate work worldwide, the number of children who read it is probably immense, but it also inspired me to use it for this installation. That speaks about the power of aesthetics or the power of art, this energy that is stored in these things that artists make. The second work is an installation of transparent hanging trays filled with colorful liquids of many colors. This installation, which is all suspended, is hung on the top floor of the museum, which is a room that has two walls basically made of glass, with very large windows opening onto the roof terrace. So it will interact with light, and this is also onto the void of the lobby.

Installation view at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), Perth, 2025 — Love addict (2025) by Paola Pivi, composed of 999 molded resin trays filled with glycerine and food colouring; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. © Paola Pivi | image © Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

DB: Why would you say that this second work is important to you?

PP: I had this vision of the work some time ago, and then it completely solidified in my head when I moved to Hawaii, with the colors and the light. And when I speak about the colors and light of Hawaii, I mean the life of the planet. It all came together while I was living there, and now I’m allowed to try to do it, which is extraordinary for me. But it’s not about me. It’s about me and every other artist on this earth. The more we are given chances to express ourselves without limitation, the more the world can go forward. Whether it’s me or another artist, I wish this for all of us. I wish for every human being to maintain freedom of expression, because these days it’s completely at risk.

Installation view at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), Perth, 2025 — Paola Pivi: Art Hunter (2025), polyurethane foam, plastic, trapeze, and feathers, 210 × 148 × 94 cm; This is my life (2025), polyurethane foam, plastic, feathers, and metal base, 270 × 138 × 97 cm; Art makes you high (2025), polyurethane foam, plastic, and feathers, 189 × 265 × 145 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. © Paola Pivi | image © Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio.

DB: Your art, while joyful and playful, also deals with big issues like climate change and coexistence. How do you hold those two things together without losing the joy or the urgency?

PP: For me, joy comes from caring about life. It’s all connected. There is no separation. If I have fun at a party, it’s because I feel connected to the people I’m with. There cannot be one without the other. We are not compartmental, it’s all connected. My polar bear sculptures, when I moved to Alaska in 2006, they came into my work out of respect for life, out of treasuring life and movement and the joy to be here. Then global warming, I prefer to call it global warming rather than climate change, became an issue we acknowledged a little bit later. In those years it was still on the fringes.

Once my sculptures began to represent polar bears, and polar bears embodied the representatives of global warming because many of them were suffering visibly, then suddenly my art also became a vehicle for this message. I find it appropriate, and I welcome this, because the entire artwork originated from admiration and respect for life. I just welcome this. I let it do what it wants to do. I’m not going to tell people what they need to think when they see my art. I want people to tell me what they think, because I’m interested in what people think. I hope people will be better than me, think better than me, and teach me.

Paola Pivi, I am a new art (2023), urethane foam, plastic, and feathers, 172 × 202 × 85 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. © Paola Pivi | image © Hugo Glendinning

DB: Have you noticed any difference in how children versus adults experience your pieces?

PP: In contemporary art, the children’s audience is kind of rare. It’s a fact. So it’s not like I have hundreds of experiences with children. Those few times when I see children in my art, they usually like it. But it’s for all ages.

Paola Pivi, exhibition view of It’s not my job, it’s your job (2023) at [mac] musée d’art contemporain de Marseille; urethane foam, plastic, and feathers, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. © Paola Pivi. | image © Hugo Glendinning

DB: Many of your works feel like impossible scenes—zebras in the Arctic, planes turning in the sky. What draws you to the impossible, and what do you hope it opens up for the audience?

PP: For the audience, I hope for freedom of thought, freedom of expression deriving from that. Why do I seek the impossible? I just try to do art, with a capital A. Certain things seem impossible, but then they’re possible because I did them. So they were not impossible to start with. We definitely shouldn’t put limits on what we can hope and achieve. And this shouldn’t be interpreted only in the Western way of conquering, but also in every possible direction — hopefully resetting some kind of balance in the world and rights for human beings.

Installation view at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), Perth, 2025 — Paola Pivi, Fortunately, one picture is worth a thousand of these suckers… (homage to Lincoln Peirce) (2025), nylon, polyurethane, metal, and blowers, 1400 × 700 × 20 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. Created with the express permission of Lincoln Peirce; the original comic strip was published on 7 January 1991. © Paola Pivi. | image © Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

DB: Looking back across almost 30 years of making art, what feels like the thread

that connects everything you’ve done?

PP: You see, I never stopped, and I don’t want to stop thinking about that. My research is pure, and to maintain it pure, I’m doing my research. I’m not evaluating my research.

Installation view at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), Perth, 2025 — Paola Pivi, Fortunately, one picture is worth a thousand of these suckers… (homage to Lincoln Peirce) (2025), nylon, polyurethane, metal, and blowers, 1400 × 700 × 20 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. Created with the express permission of Lincoln Peirce; the original comic strip was published on 7 January 1991. © Paola Pivi. | image © Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

DB: If art has the power to change how we imagine the world, what do you hope your work invites people to imagine, especially now in such an uncertain time?

PP: It’s the same answer I always gave for all 30 years. I know that art can change the world because art can change. That doesn’t happen every single time, of course, as there are thousands and thousands of artworks. But among those thousands, there is always one that, when we encounter it, instantly changes the way we think, the way we perceive the world, the capacity of perception, of elaboration, of producing thought, of producing a different way of living. So the potential is there as a fact. Everybody who loves art knows this is possible, and it does happen here and there. I hope my art does that to certain people and inspire them to become more amazing human beings in the sense that they can engage with life on the planet in a more sophisticated way. That is exciting for me to be surrounded by somebody who might have extra mental powers. I know for a fact, because people have told me, that my art has influenced some individuals to become a better version of themselves. Engaging in this operation hopefully affects me and makes me progress.

Paola Pivi, Untitled (donkey) (2003), framed photographic print, 180 × 224 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. © Paola Pivi. | image © Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

DB: Your projects often involve collaboration, whether with craftspeople, technicians, or even cartoonists in this show. How do you work with others to keep your vision alive while also letting it evolve through collaboration?

PP: I work with others when the final result is better with others, when the artwork requires it. What is at stake, what is the goal, is to make an artwork. For example, when I did 25,000 COVID Jokes Is Not a Joke, I collected 25,000 COVID jokes from 60 places in the world, so that I had a multitude of cultures and languages from all over the world. I basically collaborated with 25,000 people. And it was essential to create that artwork.

Installation view at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), Perth, 2025 — Paola Pivi, Untitled (donkey) (2003), framed photographic print, 340 × 423 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. © Paola Pivi. | image © Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

DB: The title of the show is playful yet emphatic. Is there a story behind it?

PP: The title is created by Karma Culture Brothers, my beloved husband. He’s a songwriter and composer, and words come out of his mouth in a very powerful way. I am happy to be able to grab titles from him and position these little, well, I cannot say poems, but they are like little artworks made with a few words, that sit onto my show or my art and have this very strong communication quality to set the tone to a place where we can listen to each other.

Paola Pivi Share, but it’s not fair 2012 cotton fabric and polyester filling variable dimensions Installation view, “Share, But It’s Not Fair” at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, 2012 Courtesy the Artist and Perrotin © Paola Pivi | image by Thomas Fuesser

Installation view at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), Perth, 2025 — Paola Pivi, Share, but it’s not fair (2012–2025), viscose and polyester fabric with polyester filling, dimensions variable; Free Humans (2008), acrylic wall painting, 179 × 2133 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. Sentence by Karma Culture Brothers. © Paola Pivi. | image © Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

Installation view at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), Perth, 2025 — Paola Pivi, Share, but it’s not fair (2012–2025), viscose and polyester fabric with polyester filling, dimensions variable; Free Humans (2008), acrylic wall painting, 179 × 2133 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. Sentence by Karma Culture Brothers. © Paola Pivi. | image © Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

project info:

name: Paola Pivi – I don’t like it, I love it

artist: Paola Pivi | @paolapivi

location: Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) | @artgallerywa, Perth

dates: 8th November 2025 – 26th April 2026

curator: Robert Cook

director: Colin Walker

The post ‘I know that art can change the world’: paola pivi on freedom, joy, and her AGWA exhibition appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Unspoken Codes, presented by Common Names at Art Share L.A. (October 18–31, 2025), explores how shared expression can form a language beyond words. Featuring over 2,500 hand-painted hexagon tiles contributed by individuals around the world, alongside new works by ten international artists, the exhibition reflects on the invisible emotional and social codes that shape human connection. Through collective authorship and participatory design, the project invites viewers to move through a field of color, gesture, and memory, dissolving traditional boundaries between artist and audience. The result is both an evolving archive and a quiet conversation between strangers.

Founded in Los Angeles, Common Names began as a small community art initiative grounded in the idea that creativity should not depend on fluency, expertise, or visibility. Inspired by everyday acts of making, the platform has grown into a space for shared authorship across language, culture, and age. Unspoken Codes is the platform’s first major public exhibition, and embodies a belief that empathy can take shape through form, rhythm, and collective attention.

Open in LA, USA from 18-31 October, 2025, designboom hosts an exclusive Q+A with Unspoken Codes exhibition initiator and Common Names founder Cici Zhu to delve deeper into the curatorial vision and design philosophy behind the show.

Cici Zhu, Hexagon Drawing Collection (partial view from Unspoken Codes), 2025. Collaborative installation of over 2,500 hand-painted hexagons. Art Share L.A., Los Angeles, October 18 – 31, 2025 | all images courtesy of Common Names

Interview with CICI ZHU, COMMON NAMES FOUNDER

designboom (DB): Looking back at the journey of founding Common Names, what was the original spark for the idea, and what kinds of questions were you exploring in the beginning?

Cici Zhu (CZ): The project was inspired by my experience of moving from Shanghai to Los Angeles. I arrived two years ago, and the transition came with language barriers and cultural adjustments that deeply challenged how I connected with people. I often questioned my ability to belong, or even to be understood, simply because I struggled to communicate through words.

But I started to realize that expression doesn’t rely on language alone. Communication can take many forms—visual, emotional, intuitive. Just because someone cannot speak fluently doesn’t mean they have nothing to say. That realization gave me confidence, and also made me wonder: What if we built a space where expression wasn’t measured by fluency or credentials, but simply by honesty?  That’s how Common Names began—a platform open to everyone, where creative expression is encouraged without filters or expectations. I wanted to create a place where people could meet through making, and feel recognized for what they express, not for how perfectly they say it.

installation view of Unspoken Codes, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles, October 18 – 31, 2025. Featuring works by participating artists | image © Yubo Dong

DB: In what ways has the act of curating shaped or changed how you think about art’s function and its interaction with an audience?

CZ: I’ve been practicing art since I was very young, and over time it became a personal language, something I turned to when words didn’t quite work. But curating requires a very different mindset. It’s not about speaking—it’s about listening. It taught me to see how works relate to one another, how they speak side by side, and how the audience completes that conversation.

With the hexagon installation, I read each piece carefully—the colors, lines, textures, sometimes the written reflections. Then I thought about how to place them next to each other to bring out contrast, harmony, or a kind of silent rhythm. It felt less like assembling an artwork, and more like setting a stage for others to speak.

Curating also shifted my focus away from personal meaning and toward collective experience. I realized my role wasn’t to interpret the works, but to hold space for the audience to enter and discover their own relationships to them. That was new to me, and very powerful.

installation view of Unspoken Codes, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles, October 18 – 31, 2025 | image © Zihui Song

DB: When creating unconventional exhibition spaces for many people—from professional artists to community contributors—what kinds of connections or patterns have surprised you the most?

CZ: What surprised me most is how naturally people connect through art, even if they don’t call themselves artists. In this project, I worked with participants of all ages and backgrounds—many who had never painted before or never expected their work to be seen publicly. But when I laid their tiles side by side, I saw emotions and themes repeating across languages and geographies.

People who had never met expressed the same sense of longing, or drew from the same palette of memory and joy. You start to see that some emotions don’t need translation. That kind of unspoken connection really moved me. It reminded me that creativity doesn’t come from training—it comes from being human.

installation view of Unspoken Codes, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles, October 18 – 31, 2025 | image © Zihui Song

DB: Considering Common Names as a platform, how do you define and actively design for the idea of ‘community’ within your work, especially in terms of fostering shared experience and collective voice?

CZ: I don’t think of community as a group of people who all live in the same place or share the same background. For me, community is built when people express something honestly and feel recognized for it. That’s what I try to design for in Common Names—not a shared identity, but a shared act of showing up and speaking in your own way.

In the hexagon project, no one was told what to paint or how to contribute. There was no expected outcome, just an invitation. And from that openness, a kind of quiet chorus emerged. You could see pain, joy, memory, playfulness—all coexisting in one space. I think community lives in that coexistence, in the ability to hold multiple voices without needing to flatten them.

Bryan Cruz, Inner Demons, 2023 at Unspoken Codes, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles, October 18 – 31, 2025  | image ©

DB: How has working with people across different generations and backgrounds influenced the way you think about authorship and leadership?

CZ: Bringing together works from contributors across China, the U.S., Thailand, and many other places helped me realize that authorship doesn’t have to mean ownership. My role wasn’t to speak for others, but to shape a space where many voices could be seen and felt on their own terms.

This became especially clear in working with two very different groups. First, I want to acknowledge the ten invited artists, who generously joined this project and responded to its themes in personal, nuanced ways. Their practices brought depth and contrast to the exhibition, and I’m grateful for the trust they placed in this space.

I also want to highlight our collaboration with Saint Mark’s School, a K–6 elementary school that lost nearly its entire campus in the LA fire earlier this year. Despite that devastation, 170 students contributed hexagon paintings—some joyful, others abstract or introspective. Their works were arranged into the shape of their school’s lion emblem, and now form a mural that speaks to collective resilience, memory, and hope.

Working with both professional artists and young students reminded me why I started Common Names in the first place: to celebrate many forms of expression, across age and experience, and to build something that gives back to the communities who trust us with their stories.

installation view of Cici Zhu’s Hexagon Drawing Collection, dedicated to Saint Mark’s Primary School, at Unspoken Codes, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles, October 18 – 31, 2025

DB: How do you understand space in your practice, whether as a designer, curator, or artist?

CZ: I think of space as something that shapes how people feel, move, and relate. It’s not just a background for artwork—it’s part of the experience itself. In Unspoken Codes, we thought about space as a series of emotional states: exploration, gathering, and creation. The exhibition was designed like a journey, and each room asked the visitor to take on a different role—observer, listener, or maker.

We started with a narrow hallway filled with anonymous hexagon paintings. That space asked people to slow down and look closely. Then they entered an open gallery room for the invited artists, followed by a more intimate room curated around the work of students from Saint Mark’s School. Finally, they reached the participatory workshop room, where they could contribute a tile of their own. As people moved through the space, they moved through different modes of connection.

DB: A portion of the exhibition takes place in a hallway, a space that is often transitional. What led you to choose that setting, and what kind of attention were you hoping it would invite?

CZ: We wanted to challenge the idea that important art has to be placed in the center of a gallery, framed and spotlighted. Hallways are often passed through without much attention—but in this case, we wanted that space to hold presence and stillness. The hallway was lined with hundreds of anonymous hexagon paintings from participants. Because the space was narrow, visitors had to slow down and stay close. That physical intimacy created a different kind of viewing—quiet, careful, and reflective. It also reflected the values of Common Names: everyone deserves to be seen, no matter where they are placed.

installation view of the Cici Zhu’s Hexagon Drawing Collection in the corridor space, part of the Unspoken Codes at Art Share L.A., Los Angeles, October 18 – 31, 2025

DB: What were the key factors in choosing Art Share L.A., a community-centered venue, over a more conventional gallery space for Unspoken Codes, and how does this choice align with the exhibition’s core message?

CZ: Art Share L.A. felt like the right home for this project because it supports both the making and sharing of art. It’s not just a gallery—it’s a space where artists live, work, and connect with their communities. That felt aligned with what Common Names stands for.

We weren’t looking for a polished white-cube space. We wanted a venue that reflected the raw, ongoing, participatory nature of the project. Art Share also offered us flexibility and trust, which made it possible to build something that wasn’t just a display, but an environment where people could contribute and belong.

visitors view Cici Zhu’s Hexagon Drawing Collection from below, part of Unspoken Codes at Art Share L.A., Los Angeles, October 18–31, 2025

DB: The hexagon tile is a central motif. How has this design element been used to act as a “visual system of communication” for visitors?

CZ: The hexagon shape became the foundation of this project, both visually and conceptually. In nature, hexagons connect seamlessly and grow outward—like in beehives or crystal formations. They’re stable, expandable, and modular, which made them the perfect form for holding many different voices together without hierarchy.

In the exhibition, each hexagon tile is hand-painted by a different contributor, but when placed side by side, they form a field of expression that feels collective rather than fragmented. There’s no single center. Instead, the meaning builds through repetition, placement, and proximity.

We also extended the hexagon idea into our graphic design. The poster and invitation feature a layered hexagon built from fragments of all ten invited artists’ works. It becomes a kind of echo—an expanding visual that mirrors the way expression travels and grows when it’s shared. It suggests that communication doesn’t always start from the middle. Sometimes it moves outward, softly but powerfully, carrying many voices forward at once.

selected drawings from Cici Zhu’s Hexagon Drawing Collection, Unspoken Codes, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles, October 18 – 31, 2025

DB: What kind of experience do you hope visitors carry with them after engaging with the exhibition, and what design elements contribute to this intended experience?

CZ: I hope visitors leave with a feeling of connection—whether to a stranger’s gesture, a shared memory, or even to themselves. I hope the space encourages people to slow down and notice what they might usually overlook, and to recognize that quiet expression still carries weight.

We kept the design very human-scale. No dramatic installations, no hierarchy between works. The participatory room invites people to make something, not just look. That balance between seeing and doing, between reflection and participation, is at the heart of the experience we hoped to create.

DB: Reflecting on the entire Unspoken Codes project, what unexpected insights or challenges emerged in the process of bringing it to reality?

CZ: One of the biggest surprises was how much the project shaped itself. I had plans in the beginning—layouts, categories—but as I spent time with each contribution, I realized those systems weren’t necessary. The work spoke clearly on its own. I learned to trust the process, to let go of control, and to listen more than I directed. That shift in mindset—seeing curating as listening—was a challenge at first, but it became one of the most meaningful parts of the experience.

Cici Zhu at opening ceremony of Unspoken Codes, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles, October 18 – 31, 2025  | image © Zihui Song

DB: How do you envision the Common Names initiative, and specifically the insights gained from Unspoken Codes, informing your future design projects or community-based art initiatives?

CZ: Unspoken Codes helped me realize that community doesn’t always come from shared identity—it can come from shared expression. I’ve seen how people connect across distance and difference simply by making something honest and putting it into the world.

Going forward, I want to continue designing projects that create space for many voices, especially those that are often overlooked or undervalued. In Unspoken Codes, for example, I reached out to Saint Mark’s School, a school badly devastated by the Los Angeles fire, to gather canvases and expose them to the public to honor their perseverance and optimism following the rebuild. In the future, I hope to connect more with communities whose voices need to be heard and give back through the transformative power of art.

Common Names is still growing, and I see it as a long-term process of listening and building alongside others. As part of that, we will continue to support and contribute to the recovery of Saint Mark’s School—not just in gratitude for their participation, but because their presence in this project has reminded me that expression can be a way of healing, and care can take many forms.

selected drawings from Cici Zhu’s Hexagon Drawing Collection, Unspoken Codes, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles, October 18 – 31, 2025

project info:

name: Unspoken Codes

organization: Common Names | @common.names

exhibition initiator: Cici Zhu (founder Common Names)

location: ArtShare LA, USA | @artshare_la

dates: October 18-31, 2025

The post common names exhibition ‘unspoken codes’ fosters space for voices left unheard appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Hidden behind an unmarked door in Paris’ 7th arrondissement, ‘Rose, c’est la vie’ is an unexpected sanctuary of softness amid the intensity of Art Basel Paris 2025, conceived by architect and designer India Mahdavi in collaboration with Luca Pronzato, founder of We Are Ona, and Mexican chef Jesús Durón. The week-long pop-up dining experience is set inside a former car repair shop, turned into a radical speakeasy of texture, warmth, and color, where every surface is swathed in a floral pink textile inspired by the Rose d’Ispahan. The project reimagines hospitality as an act of emotion, what Mahdavi calls ‘the seriousness of happiness.’

On the occasion of the event, designboom speaks with Mahdavi and Pronzato about the origins of their collaboration and the making of this multisensory dining experience. ‘We’re in a world that is quite aggressive right now,’ Mahdavi tells us. ‘The past is past and the future — we don’t know. My work is always about creating memories, ephemeral moments of happiness that you can take away with you.’

images by Laurent Giannesini, unless stated otherwise

 a speakeasy of softness at art basel paris

As Pronzato explains, the collaboration grew out of a long-standing admiration for Mahdavi’s work. ‘At We Are Ona, we create culinary experiences where we like to invite not only guest chefs but also creatives, designers, artists, and architects to think in their own way about the culinary experience,’ the founder of the nomadic dining collective shares with designboom. ‘I’ve always dreamed of working with India Mahdavi, and I’m so happy to celebrate her work and let our guests experience her pop-up.’

What began as conversations between Paris and Mexico evolved into the idea of an ‘ultra-feminine, feminist speakeasy.’ For Mahdavi, this was a conscious departure from We Are Ona’s earlier projects, which had been mainly led by men. ‘I thought I had to make a rupture,’ the Paris-based architect and designer notes. ‘A continuity within the quality, of course, but a rupture with the aesthetics that were being brutalist, minimalist, etc. I wanted it to be immersive — the experience has to start from the street. Where are you going? How do you enter? There should be a bit of a surprise.’ 

That sense of discovery guided the search for the venue. After reviewing several options, the team settled on an old carrosserie, a former car workshop, where the rough industrial shell could contrast with Mahdavi’s delicate transformation, as her design wraps the entire interior in a bespoke textile inspired by the Rose d’Ispahan, a small and fragrant Persian flower often used in decorative arts. Find our full conversation with Luca Pronzato of We Are Ona and India Mahdavi below.

‘Rose, c’est la vie’ is an unexpected sanctuary of softness amid the intensity

in conversation with India Mahdavi and Luca Pronzato

designboom (DB): How did the idea for this collaboration come about?

Luca Pronzato (LP): At We Are Ona, we create culinary experiences where we like to invite not only guest chefs but also creatives, designers, artists, and architects to think in their own way about the culinary experience. I’ve always dreamed of working with India Mahdavi. We’ve been talking about it for a very long time, and I’m so happy to celebrate India’s work and to let the We Are Ona guests experience her pop-up.

the week-long pop-up is set inside a former car repair shop

DB: Was the location something that We Are Ona decided first and then invited India, or did you discuss it together?

LP: What I love about the creative process is the conversation that we have had along the way with India. It’s pretty much carte blanche at We Are Ona. I remember India talking to me about this idea of creating a super feminine speakeasy, where you can push a door in Paris and arrive in her world.

India Mahdavi (IM): One of the first things I noticed was that We Are Ona has mainly worked with men and fewer women. I thought I had to really make sort of a rupture, a continuity within the quality, of course, but sort of a rupture with the aesthetics that were being sort of brutalist, minimalist, etc. I wanted it to be a very immersive experience. The experience has to start from the street. Where are you going? How do you enter? There should be a bit of a surprise.

I started working with the idea of a floral fabric, which was inspired by the rose of Isfahan, Iran. It’s a small, beautiful rose that has the most incredible perfume. I just took it to a different scale, and it turned into this kind of shimmery, feminine world. I felt like within this environment of the art fair, it would be nice to have this feeling of being embraced by your grandmother, in a way. So, the project was crafted by me responding not only to We Are Ona, but also to the event in Paris, and to my own aesthetics. What’s interesting about this experience is that you’re free to work with your imagination.

Then, when I showed my idea to Luca, he loved it. Still, we had to find a place where we could have this element of surprise. Luca and his team proposed five to ten spaces. We investigated what sequences we could create around each of them, and then chose the one that worked best.

the industrial shell contrasts with Mahdavi’s delicate transformation

DB: So, you wanted to create a contrast between something typically seen as masculine, like a car workshop, and a much softer, more delicate atmosphere?

IM: It’s an old carrosserie that had been transformed into an office space, but there was still this roughness due to the industrial feel of the building. The way you enter is the main surprise element. But in any case, yes, it’s a contrast: having this space, which is rough and completely covered in one pattern.

Mahdavi’s design wraps the entire interior in a bespoke textile inspired by the Rose d’Ispahan

DB: Could you elaborate on the design concept, especially the all-over textile treatment, and how it contributes to the tactile and immersive quality of the space?

IM: The fabric gives you a very special feel. I’ve always been interested in designing patterns for fabrics or wallpapers, and that’s part of my language. I use ornaments a lot in my work. It’s a way of giving a new identity to a space that we’re modifying. It’s an efficient and beautiful way of doing that.

At that moment, I was also designing a line of fabrics for this French company called Pierre Frey. So, we used that as a base, we took this fabric, scaled it, and worked with them to produce it. It’s based on the rose. It’s very fresh, very familiar, because we’ve all seen homes covered with floral patterns, and I’m just taking it to a different level, making it radical. It’s an ode to soft power because soft power is something subtle that does exist, but when you have it all over, it becomes very powerful.

the space becomes a tactile cocoon

DB: Luca, how do the dining elements and overall experience dialogue with India’s design?

LP: It’s a total. Everything was settled with India, from the main architecture to the table design, tablecloths, plates, glasses, cutlery, and the aprons of the staff, even adding some surprises around the idea of the rose.

We also created a conversation with Jesús Durán, an amazing chef from Mexico that I really love. I think this will really add a lot to the experience. He’s one of the most incredible emerging talents — he used to work at Pujol, and we worked on some projects in Mexico with India. So there’s a nice link there.

guests share a communal table

DB: The way you describe this experience, it sounds like you’re focusing on positive elements — softness, happiness, warmth, and coziness. Why was it important to highlight these in this project?

IM: You know, we’re in a world that is quite aggressive right now. We’re surrounded by a future we don’t know. So I think that’s what it is, it’s about the present moment, the past is past and the future — we don’t know. My work is always about creating memories, creating an ephemeral moment of happiness that you can take away with you. The idea of the experience is really important — we see so many images on social media that we don’t know what’s real anymore. The only way to know if something is real or not is to live it, to experience it yourself. So I think this multisensorial experience is super important. It’s also about togetherness, because with this dining experience you’ll be sitting maybe next to somebody you don’t know, since it’s communal tables. You’ll share the same experience, which will engage conversations and encounters. All these people coming are interested in experience, in design, in food. It’s all about that.

LP: I totally agree with India. The point on human experiences is so important because all these details have been designed to put the guests into a full culinary experience. That’s something we’re really proud of at We Are Ona, creating this togetherness.

Durón’s menu interacts with Mahdavi’s sensory landscape

project info:

name: Rose, c’est la vie, We Are Ona x India Mahdavi

artist: We Are Ona | @we.are.ona

designer: India Mahdavi | @indiamahdavi 

location: Paris, France (7th arrondissement)

chef: Jesús Durón

occasion: Art Basel Paris 2025

The post india mahdavi’s rose-draped speakeasy for we are ona pops up in paris during art basel appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Multidisciplinary artist Dionysios presents Precarious Design, a series of objects and installations that explore fragility, impermanence, and improvisation. The works span design, sculpture, and installation, appearing suspended between utility and artifact, carrying the traces of time, use, and human care. designboom discusses with Dionysios how found and salvaged materials carry memory, how fragility becomes a source of resilience, and how his series transforms instability into functional, ritual-infused objects. The artist shares insights on shaping experience, embracing impermanence, and creating works where scarcity and care become central to design. ‘Precariousness is not weakness; it’s a form of truth. It forces you to stay alert, to remain awake to the present moment,’ Dionysios notes during our interview.

Rooted in his background in clinical psychology, the Greek artist approaches each project as a choreography of experience. ‘I often think less like a “maker” and more like a choreographer of experience: how someone interacts with the work, what they feel without realizing why, and how they might leave changed.’ Dionysios is drawn to the histories embedded in materials. ‘They carry memory. A found object has already lived a life before it enters my work. Scratches, dents, traces of touch, passage of time. When I use it, I’m not starting from zero; I’m in conversation with that past,’ he tells designboom. 

Meditation on Time | image by Raf Souliotis, courtesy of Onassis Foundation

precarious design explores human interaction

The Precarious Design series was presented in two contexts during the Art Athina 2025 fair. At Taxidi Tinos’ booth in the Design section, Cave Drawings inscribes sun and moon motifs in gold and silver leaf on rusted steel, their lacquered backs recalling couture linings while their corroded surfaces evoke humanity’s earliest marks. Across town at the art and design platform Spazio Altro, the exhibition PLAYDATE gathered objects including the Koutsombola (gossip bench), Balance Chair, Surrealist Side Table, and Totem. These pieces combine marble fragments, ancient timbers, and repurposed plastics into provisional yet fully functional forms, while gold leaf applied to century-old cypress logs and olive roots imbues salvaged matter with symbolic weight.

For Dionysios, the conceptual approach of Precarious Design stems from his broader practice. ‘We live in a world that sells us permanence and perfection, but in reality everything is temporary, everything shifts. Relationships, cities, even nature feel unstable. Through Precarious Design, and my practice overall, I don’t try to disguise that, I highlight it,’ he reflects. The series builds on the artist’s ongoing exploration of impermanence, which he has pursued in other works such as Meditation on Time (2022), presented at Onassis Stegi’s Plásmata 3 in Athens, and the durational performance Meditation on Light (2023) at the Great Pyramids of Giza. Read on for our full conversation with the Athens- and Paris-based artist.

Meditation on Time (2022) was presented at Onassis Stegi’s Plásmata 3 in Athens

designboom interviews dionysios

designboom (DB): You started out in clinical psychology. How does that background influence the way you create?

Dionysios (D): Psychology gave me a way to think in terms of relationships and dynamics. Whether I’m making a sculpture, a design object, a digital piece, or a large-scale installation, I’m not just arranging forms, I’m shaping behavior, atmosphere, even silence. It trained me to see the conscious and unconscious simultaneously, to notice what’s expressed and what’s left unspoken. I often think less like a ‘maker’ and more like a choreographer of experience: how someone interacts with the work, what they feel without realizing why, and how they might leave changed. I don’t use psychology as a method anymore, but it remains the quiet foundation of how I see people, spaces, and the interactions between them.

a crystallized truck as meditation on time, divinity, and reflection | image via @bydionysios

DB: When did you realize you wanted to work across sculpture, installation, and digital media rather than just one medium?

D: I don’t think there was a single moment. For me, it was never about choosing a discipline. It was about choosing the right language for each idea. Sometimes an idea needs the weight of a physical object, other times it needs to stretch into space and become an environment, and other times it belongs in the digital layer that now shadows our lives. What excites me is the movement between these forms, how they overlap, contradict, or amplify each other. I guess I realized quite early that confining myself to one medium would feel like cutting the wings off the work before it even began.

a relic from the future | image via @bydionysios

DB: Many of your pieces use discarded or salvaged objects. What draws you to these materials?

D: They carry memory. A found object has already lived a life before it enters my work. Scratches, dents, traces of touch, passage of time. When I use them, I’m not starting from zero; I’m in conversation with that past. There’s also something democratic about it: these objects are ordinary, recognizable, and almost invisible in their daily use, but when you shift their context, they reveal new meanings. And personally, I like the tension between fragility and endurance, an old car part, a worn surface, an ancient piece of wood, or a marble scrap. They are both vulnerable and resilient. I am also a huge advocate for sustainability, not as a political stance, but as a way of being. There is an abundance of materials to work with and transform.

Sunset Chair | image courtesy of the artist

DB: Can you explain Precarious Design in your own words?

D: Precarious Design is the more functional, sculptural side of my practice. For me, it’s about embracing instability rather than hiding it. We live in a world that sells us permanence and perfection, but in reality everything is temporary, everything shifts. Relationships, cities, even nature feel unstable.

Through Precarious Design, and my practice overall, I don’t try to disguise that, I highlight it. A work might look monumental, but if you look closer you see its sensitivity, its ability to change or even collapse. Expanding this into functional design pieces is my way of stretching the idea into the tangible, the everyday, creating objects to live with. Precariousness is not weakness; it’s a form of truth. It forces you to stay alert, to remain awake to the present moment.

Balance Chair 2 | image courtesy of Spazio Altro

DB: Your work often explores fragility and impermanence. Why are these ideas important to you?

D: Because they are unavoidable. Everything I’ve learned, through psychology, through life, through making, points back to impermanence. Objects decay, bodies age, structures fall apart. But within that transience, you also find a strange kind of eternity. Life itself is fragile and impermanent. I think it would be almost arrogant to create something that pretends to last forever. I’d rather make something that speaks to the present, to this exact encounter with the viewer. If it lasts, that’s beyond me. But the ephemerality, that’s where the intensity comes from. It’s a paradox I keep returning to: the eternal inside the temporary.

Dionysios approaches each project as a choreography of experience | image courtesy of the artist

DB: Meditation on Light at the Pyramids sounds incredible! What was it like to show your work there?

D: It was surreal, intense, overwhelming, probably the most transformative experience I’ve had to date. I went with the intention to present a perfect gold carpet at the feet of the pyramids, only for the desert to bury it, to destroy it. That’s when I truly understood my work and myself: learning to surrender to external forces and let the piece become what it is meant to be. It turned into a long-durational, performative installation rather than a monumental static object. People from the desert, camel riders, exhibition visitors, and guides all came each day to help add gold leaf, knowing it would be erased at night and start again the next day. It taught me humility and the power of collective effort. What moved me most was the fleeting nature of the work coexisting, even briefly, with something that has stood for thousands of years. That tension between the ephemeral and the eternal is exactly where my practice lives.

Meditation on Light at Great Pyramids of Giza – Art d’Egypte 2023 | image courtesy of the artist

DB: Looking ahead, what directions or experiments excite you most in your work?

D: I want to keep pushing the boundaries of where art can live. That means larger public works in iconic locations. But also unexpected collaborations with technology, theater, maybe even cinema or fashion. I’m interested in how an installation can shift when it meets the dramaturgy of a stage or the rigor of a science lab, and how an object might function in a ritual outside of the white cube. At the same time, I’m continuing to explore the overlap between the physical and the digital, not in a loud, ‘tech-first’ way, but in subtle infusions where nature, light, and code intertwine. Ultimately, what excites me is keeping the work alive, unstable, open to mutation. I don’t want a fixed formula. I want to surprise myself, and by extension, the audience.

Koutsombola chair | image courtesy of Spazio Altro

Dionysios portrait | image by Dio color

project info:

name: Precarious Design

artist: Dionysios | @bydionysios

The post dionysios on precarious design: turning found objects into sites of care and functional ritual appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Inside Milan’s Fondazione Prada, Alex Da Corte pays homage to Claes Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum (1965-1977) through a multitude of pop culture and art objects encased in a singular, panoramic glass pane. On view from September 18th, 2025, the exhibition and installation sit on the eighth floor of the Torre building within Fondazione Prada’s lot as part of Atlas, the foundation’s exhibition project presenting solo or comparative works by artists across the eight floors of the building. For the first time, visitors experience these two installations at once in the same space because the two mini museums – one by Claes Oldenburg and the other by Alex Da Corte – stand next to each other. When viewed from above, the structure housing the Swedish-born American sculptor’s collection is shaped like a cartoon mouse head and an early movie camera, drawn from his drawing named Geometric House.

In Alex Da Corte’s case, there’s a macabre twist: his structure looks like a cut-off left ear of the mouse, a reference to the episode of Vincent van Gogh’s life. Inside both of the mini museums, a collection of objects appeals to the visitors, reflecting on mass production and consumer culture as well as the ever-changing trends in pop culture. In an interview with designboom during the preview of Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) (2022) inside Milan’s Fondazione Prada, Alex Da Corte tells us that he arranged the collection as a sort of self-portrait. When asked if they reflect his life, a peek into his daily practice, he shares with us: ‘I’m not interested in revealing a specific event or part of myself. I think viewers see what they see and find their own lives in the objects, whether or not they know the work’s source. We project meaning onto objects because they ground us and make a safe space.’

all images courtesy of Fondazione Prada | exhibition photos by Delfino Sisto Legnani – DSL Studio

Personal objects in varying color intensity for the exhibition

Alex Da Corte’s Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) (2022) inside Milan’s Fondazione Prada mirrors the curation and artistic practice of Claes Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum (1965-1977). The similarities occur in amassing and presenting mass-produced and pop-culture objects, but the saturation and shade of the objects seem shifted. It may be due to the aging of the objects, but in Claes Oldenburg’s space, the repertoire is hushed, earthy, wooden, domestic. In Alex Da Corte’s room, the colors are louder, the objects are familiar and recent, and the arrangement has a comic tinge. In terms of color, the Venezuelan-American artist explains to designboom that it is important in his practice.

‘Color for me is essential. Color relates to a psychological state. Colors chosen for products are meant to attract or repel. Depending on taste, you might dislike something just because of its color,’ he says. ‘When arranging things here, it’s often about color; painting in space with objects. Claes also had a perfect sense for color. His objects are rich, maybe a different tonality, but similarly colorful.’ Away from the shade, the technique in presenting the Mouse Museum collection inside Fondazione Prada links the artistic practice between the two artists. The order is not alphabetical, by material, or based on production year, yet in both museums, the items relate through a loosely associative sequence, relying mostly on visual similarities and suggestive connections.

exhibition view of Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) (2022) by Alex Da Corte

Alex Da Corte mirrors Claes Oldenburg’s collecting practice

Playful personal objects show up in Alex Da Corte’s Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) inside Milan’s Fondazione Prada. Among them is a Harry Potter magic wand, a Bart Simpson thermos, kitchen utensils, a plastic beer pong cup, and a foam cast of Marcel Duchamp’s face. There’s also the ceramic-glazed Garfield statue, a yellow rooster with a tail made of quill feathers, wearable feet gloves that resemble real skin, beer bottles, brooms, a miniature disco ball, a blasted pumpkin, and perhaps the showstopper, a zombie-looking head atop a lamp base. These peculiar objects mirror the ones inside Claes Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum: a rotting slice of pie, a balloon shaped like a human leg, an enlarged cluster of bananas, a giant ceramic ear, and even a miniaturized ladder.

‘Looking at Claes’s works today, I don’t know the objects, but I’m amused or reminded of something. I imagine where they came from and their function,’ Alex Da Corte shares with designboom. ‘My interest comes from thrift stores, where you find a fragment of an object and wonder about its function. Without its original purpose, it can have a new life. Seeing a second or third life for objects is exciting.’ For the artist, it feels like a dream come true seeing the objects collected by Claes Oldenburg for his Mouse Museum for the first time in Fondazione Prada. ‘I only knew them through photographs in the book, and those were in black and white. To experience the colors and textures and to see so many similarities is exciting. My interest is in hands, food, plastic, and even clay. There’s humor in the work, and I see a parallel there,’ he adds.

the exhibition and installation sit on the eighth floor of the Torre building within Fondazione Prada’s lot

The first time Alex Da Corte came across Claes Oldenburg’s works was around 25 years ago. ‘It was in my undergraduate library. I stumbled upon the book he made with his partner to mark the presentation of the Mouse Museum. I knew Claes’s work and his relationships to soft things, sculpture, and performance, but I didn’t know much about contemporary art. When I saw the Mouse Museum, I was taken by all it afforded an audience and how generous it was. Only today am I seeing the real one. For 25 years, I’ve been wondering about this work,’ he says.The artist created his Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) in 2022 for his survey exhibition ‘Mr. Remember,’ which is on view at the Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk, Denmark. 

He recalls that when he was thinking about what a retrospective or a survey of his own work would look like and what it means to remember himself and the objects he had gathered over his life. ‘The person who did that so correctly was Claes. I thought, I can’t remake the whole museum; it’s too sacred. So I thought, I’ll cut off an ear: a little piece of me, a little piece of him,’ he shares. Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) (2022) is inside the Torre within the lot of Milan’s Fondazione Prada, on the eighth floor. The public viewing begins from September 18th, 2025, where viewers can also visit Sueño Perro: Instalación Celuloide by De Alejandro G. Iñárritu, a cinematic and photographic exhibition that unveils and showcases previously hidden film materials and imagery by the Mexican filmmaker, which were preserved for 25 years in the film archives of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. 

among the objects are a Harry Potter magic wand and a foam cast of Marcel Duchamp’s face

the technique in presenting the Mouse Museum collection links the artistic practice between the two artists

everyday objects are also on view in the installation

exhibition view of Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) (2022) by Alex Da Corte

exhibition view of Mouse Museum (1965-1977) by Claes Oldenburg

a collection of objects appeals to the visitors, reflecting on mass production and consumer culture

the similarities between the two installations occur in amassing and presenting mass-produced and pop-culture objects

view of the cardboard-made toothpaste

the collection is on view through a singular glass pane

view of the structures on the eighth floor of the Torre building

left: Claes Oldeburg’s Mouse Museum (1965-1977) | right: Alex Da Corte’s Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) (2022)

the installations are on view from September 18th, 2025

project info:

name: Mouse Museum (1965-1977); Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) (2022)

artists: Claes Oldenburg, Alex Da Corte 

museum: Fondazione Prada (Milan) | @fondazioneprada

location: Largo Isarco, 2, 20139 Milan, Italy

opening date: September 18th, 2025ù

photography: Delfino Sisto Legnani – DSL Studio | @dsl__studio

The post alex da corte pays homage to claes oldenburg’s mouse museum in milan’s fondazione prada appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Village Numérique forms part of MUTEK, a festival that focuses on electronic music and digital arts with performances across Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles. Running between August 19th and 24th, 2025, the cultural event operates for six consecutive days with programs and shows on audio and visual presentations. Esplanade Tranquille serves as the central hub for outdoor programming, while there are three venues hosting the main indoor one, namely The Society for Arts and Technology building, Place des Arts’ Théâtre Maisonneuve, and the MTELUS functions for presentations. In the same festival, the MUTEK Forum also takes place, which functions as a marketplace and discussion platform for digital creation professionals. Then, the Village Numérique, a public digital art project that takes place in the Quartier des Spectacles, with a circuit of 23 digital art installations. 

It runs beyond the event’s date, from August 14th to 28th, 2025, with digital art installations in several formats. In an interview with designboom, Alain Mongeau – the founder, artistic and general director of MUTEK – and Mikaël Frascadore – the executive producer of Village Numérique – explore the 26th edition’s theme on a new cycle of digital creativity, as well as some of the digital art installations presented at the circuit. ‘MUTEK has always been at the forefront of digital art dissemination, with special installation projects having been presented in the past. For this second edition of Village Numérique, we have expanded our offering with a greater diversity of media, more in-depth content, and more ways for the public to discover digital arts,’ Mikaël Frascadore tells designboom.

FLIP! by Troublemakers | all images courtesy of MUTEK and Village Numérique; photos by Tannaz Shirazi

Digital art installations around mutek’s village numérique

The digital art installations across Village Numérique include large wall projections showing digital images and moving visuals on building façades, interactive works that allow visitors to take part by moving, touching, or responding to sensors, virtual reality stations that use headsets and controllers to create digital environments, and immersive projects that combine sound, light, and moving images to surround the audience. At the festival’s Place de la Paix, The Door of the Refuge sets up an immersive passage that acts as an entry point for visitors, guiding them into a sanctuary-like space. Nearby at the Society for Arts and Technology, Astronomical Water mixes cosmic themes with water-inspired visuals and sound, using projection and movement to create flowing images.

The VS AI Street Fighting at Le Central allows visitors to engage in a simulated fight scenario where artificial intelligence responds to human movement, showing a contest between human players and machine systems. Moving underground to Saint-Laurent Station, ‘Wantastigan – what will remain still’ reflects on time and permanence through digital imagery, balancing static forms with shifting motion. In Le Parterre, a cluster of works appears. In Camera focuses on private perspectives, showing hidden or internal views through audiovisual sequences. I’M NOT A ROBOT examines the line between human and machine identity, asking viewers to engage with prompts about authenticity, while TETRA uses geometric design to project or display modular structures in three dimensions. 

Situational Compliance by Matthew Biederman and Lucas Paris

Technology-driven artworks on new cycle of creativity

The digital art installations at Village Numérique also showcase Situational Compliance, which responds directly to its surroundings, adjusting visuals and sounds based on audience movement. Public Space, Latent Space contrasts the visible city environment with hidden digital layers, connecting shared physical space with coded systems, while For You I Will Be An Island presents a narrative of separation, creating an enclosed environment where the visitor feels isolated within the work. Then, there’s FLIP!, which introduces constant reversals and rotations, using visual shifts to alter orientation and perspective. At Hexagram’s experimentation room, HEXAPHONE delivers six-channel sound, placing the audience inside a controlled audio field. Going to UQAM’s Agora, three works are staged: Éco-sonorités du vivant reproduces soundscapes from natural and biological sources, Storms immerses audiences in visual and sonic turbulence, and OPAL explores refraction, scattering light and color across surfaces. 

In the mezzanine of UQAM, NEST: Colony constructs an organic digital structure that simulates growth and collective form. Back to the Place des Arts, Dialogues invites interaction through conversational exchanges, with inputs creating shifting outputs, while Labyrinthe builds a maze-like path, encouraging physical navigation through digital corridors. Then in UQAM’s Chaufferie, Reflections uses mirrors and projection to create surfaces that invite contemplation and play with repetition of images. Some of these digital art installations at Village Numérique use high-resolution projectors, motion sensors, cameras, pressure plates, LED systems, and real-time rendering software, falling in line with this year’s theme on the new cycle of digital creativity. Our conversation below with Alain Mongeau and Mikaël Frascadore further unpacks the 26th edition of MUTEK festival, the curatorial process for selecting the presenting artists, and the over twenty digital installations in the Quartier des Spectacles.

detailed view of Situational Compliance by Matthew Biederman and Lucas Paris

Interview with Alain Mongeau and Mikaël Frascadore

Designboom (DB): This year marks the 26th edition of MUTEK, with the festival embarking on a ‘new cycle of digital creativity.’ What does this new cycle represent in terms of programming, vision, and MUTEK’s place in the global (electronic) arts scene? What kinds of experiences have you shaped for the attendees?

Alain Mongeau (AM): The idea of a ‘new cycle of digital creativity’ embodies both continuity and renewal. After celebrating our 25th anniversary last year, we felt it was the right moment to open a new chapter, one that recognizes how profoundly digital arts and electronic music have evolved and how MUTEK can continue to serve as a laboratory for what comes next. In terms of programming, this means delving even deeper into the intersections of music, immersive audiovisual works, and emerging technologies – AI, spatial sound, and beyond – while keeping live performance at the very heart of the festival. At the same time, we are broadening the ways in which new works can be presented, exemplified this year by the return of the Digital Village for its second edition. 

In camera by Ying Gao

AM (continues): Our vision is to reaffirm MUTEK as a meeting ground where experimentation, diversity, and critical reflection converge, offering audiences a singular aesthetic experience filled with discovery and wonder. On the global scene, MUTEK has long acted as a bridge: between generations, between local and international creators, and across disciplines. This new cycle reinforces our role as a platform where ambitious projects can find a stage, and where audiences can experience these innovations firsthand. 

This year, we have crafted a wide spectrum of experiences: intimate concerts, large-scale immersive performances, an open-air program in the bucolic setting of Théâtre de Verdure, thought-provoking daytime talks and workshops, and the serendipitous encounters that only a live, collective festival context can spark. Our aim is to inspire curiosity, engage multiple senses, and nurture a sense of community around the exploration of digital creativity.

The Door of the Refuge by Normal Studio

DB: This year’s lineup includes the North American premiere of Max Cooper’s Lattice 3D/AV and performances from Kevin Saunderson’s E-Dancer. What’s your curatorial process for selecting both global names and emerging voices? In what ways does the team’s selection allow the attendees to see, feel, and experience the relationship between the music and digital art?

AM: Our programming approach is rooted above all in the search for balance and dialogue between the different facets of the festival. On one hand, we are committed to inviting renowned figures such as Max Cooper or Kevin Saunderson, whose work in electronic music and digital art is exemplary. Their presence provides a strong anchor for the lineup, giving audiences the opportunity to experience ambitious projects by established artists in a live setting. At the same time, MUTEK has always been dedicated to discovery and to giving space to emerging artists who are pushing boundaries in their own ways. 

Storms by Quayola

AM (continues): We scan projects internationally, but we also place particular emphasis on the local scene, which is especially vibrant this year, for instance, our open call targeting Canadian artists received around 450 submissions. By placing young talents alongside established names, we create a dialogue that highlights both continuity and innovation within this artistic field. At the heart of it all is the focus on the live, sensory relationship between music and digital art.

We are drawn to works that engage audiences beyond sound alone: immersive audiovisual performances, experiments with 360° projections and spatialized sound, or hybrid formats that challenge conventional stage dynamics. The goal is to create an ecosystem of experiences where festival-goers don’t just listen, but also feel, see, and truly inhabit the artistic universe that each creator brings to life.

VS AI Street Fighting by Dimension Plus

DB: Village Numérique was launched in 2024 to celebrate MUTEK’s 25th anniversary. What was the original inspiration behind creating a standalone digital art circuit within the festival, and how has that vision evolved for this second edition?

Mikaël Frascadore (MF): MUTEK has always been at the forefront of digital art dissemination, with special installation projects having been presented in the past. However, we felt that there was a real enthusiasm, but also an opportunity to showcase the enormous talent of local creators in a more formal context. Quebec is the birthplace of many highly innovative projects, artists, and studios. For this second edition, we have expanded our offering with a greater diversity of media, more in-depth content, and more ways for the public to discover digital arts. We want to develop audiences and contribute to the success of the industry.

NEST: Colony by Iregular

DB: This year’s Village Numérique features over twenty digital installations across Quartier des Spectacles. Can you walk us through how these works are presented? What kinds of tools, platforms, or experimental tech are being used by artists in this year’s program, if you can name a few, and how do they encourage interaction with the viewers, including those unfamiliar with digital art?

MF: There are indeed 28 installations spread across 23 venues. This year, several projects have been made possible thanks to university research projects. For instance, AI agents are used to generate content, analyze gestures, and translate them into actions. Audiovisual, networking, and computer integration are now at the heart of the means by which artists express themselves. The projects offer more targeted experiences, where people can interact directly with the content. Even when the works have multiple layers of complexity, newcomers can still find something to enjoy because the means of interaction remain intuitive. Users who want to go deeper can also do so.

For You I Will Be An Island by Chun Hua Catherine Dong

MF (continues): The artists have taken care to make their installations accessible in a variety of ways, despite the denser content or messages. For example, artist Matthew Biederman presents a project that repurposes the game ‘Simon Says’ to explore, with humor and insight, the mechanisms of public surveillance. Using AI and computer vision, the work stages a system that observes, interprets, and directs the actions of the audience, making visible the power dynamics at work in our digital environments. 

Participants are invited to follow simple instructions. Each posture performed becomes both an act of individuality and a negation of identity in a digitally mediated environment. The device places the body at the center of a game of control, between autonomy and algorithmic injunction.

view of a light-driven installation in the public space

Labyrinthe by students from UQAM’s School of Visual and Media Arts

project info:

name: MUTEK | @mutekmontreal

founder and general director: Alain Mongeau

location: Quartier des Spectacles in Montreal, Canada

dates: August 19th and 24th, 2025

circuit: Village Numérique | @village.numerique

executive producer: Mikaël Frascadore

dates: August 14th to 28th, 2025

photography: Tannaz Shirazi | @natourstudio

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Mona Sugata’s intricate sculptures are made from cotton fabric, thread, glue, and pigment, materials that hold traces of fragility, heat, and breath. Shaped into botanical forms and infused with an otherworldly quality, her works feel alive in a surreal way. In her latest exhibition, What Resonates Through Us — Echoes in Overtones, on view at Galerie Ovo in Taipei from August 22nd to September 6th, 2025, Sugata presents a series of installations that extend her ongoing exploration of living systems, unseen presences, and the subtle conditions that allow life to take shape. ‘I imagine them as relics quietly resting in an ancient monastery, holding a sacred presence,’ she tells designboom.

‘My installations do not try to speak too much,’ she remarks during our discussion. ‘They are quietly placed with space, light, air, and subtle presence so that the viewer may encounter their own sense of life and the quiet sensations within.’ The works do not represent plants in a literal way, but they reflect Sugata’s close attention to the movements and structures of plants growing in her own garden, particularly the forms of stems and the gestures of growth that seem to carry vitality. Her observations are translated into symbolic organisms, gradually taking on a bodily quality and sometimes resembling intelligent life.

all images courtesy of Mona Sugata | Tree of Life — A Planet of Playing Beings

delicate forms rooted in sacred cycles

Japanese artist Mona Sugata works with untreated cotton, glue, and diluted pigments, allowing the fabric to absorb and bleed color. Once dry, the pieces are shaped and detailed using a heated iron tool to burn fine vein-like lines into the surface. ‘This is the moment when life begins to inhabit the work,’ she reveals. Sugata avoids coating or overworking the surface in order to preserve the softness of the materials and the natural shifts in tone, resulting in a surface that feels more like something in a slow state of becoming instead of a finished object.

Pillar of Prayer Kumade and Pillar of Prayer Purple Star, some of her latest works, are rooted in the Japanese jichinsai, a ceremony performed before construction, where offerings are made to the local land deity. The artist imagines these sculptures as vertical structures that remain after such a ceremony, linking the land and its inhabitants. The ceramic base represents the land god, while the plant forms growing from it reflect a relationship of coexistence, between what is built and what is already there. ‘It expresses the idea of sacred plants living on the god of the land and living in beautiful coexistence,’ Sugata notes.

Tree of Life — A Planet of Playing Beings, installed at the atrium of the Spiral art center in Tokyo, reflects Sugata’s idea of the Earth as an active field shaped by invisible beings, bacteria, insects, and other non-human lives. ‘Even after death, life becomes part of other beings, undergoing a perpetual cycle of rebirth and rebirth,’ she says. The work evokes these cycles through layered organic forms that spiral outward in motion, resembling a kind of visual system for life as play, disappearance, and return.

reflecting Sugata’s idea of the Earth

A Practice Shaped by Sensitivity and Direct Contact

Sugata’s approach is shaped by physical sensitivity rather than strict planning. She adjusts the process depending on the direction of each piece, working by feel rather than concept. ‘If I feel tension or resistance in my body, I take it as a sign that something is off,’ she explains. The final step, using the iron to create form, is done by hand and involves direct contact with heat, often leading to burns. Still, she treats these traces as part of the work itself, as reminders of material resistance, timing, and repetition.

Mona Sugata was born in Tokyo in 1983 and studied printmaking at Tama Art University. That background still informs her handling of surface and tone, but her installations move away from printed images into something more spatial and responsive. ‘My works are not for interpretation,’ she highlights. ‘They are for quiet encounters.’

Sugata hopes viewers will encounter something of their own in her work. ‘In such stillness,’ she reflects, ‘one might sense a deeper connection, with the world, with others. And in that resonance, I too receive something essential.’

an active field shaped by invisible beings, bacteria, insects, and other non-human lives

Mona Sugata works with untreated cotton, glue, and diluted pigments

a kind of visual system for life as play, disappearance, and return

layered organic forms spiral outward in motion

Midday Moon (left) sits closer to abstraction

inspired by the pale yellow moon sometimes visible during daylight

Pillar of Prayer Kumade and Pillar of Prayer Purple Star are rooted in the Japanese jichinsai

the artist imagines these sculptures as vertical structures that remain after a ceremony

the plant forms reflect a relationship of coexistence

the pieces are shaped and detailed using a heated iron tool

the artist burns fine, vein-like lines into the surface

Sugata avoids coating or overworking the surface in order to preserve the softness of the materials

a surface that feels like something in a state of becoming

project info:

artist: Mona Sugata | @monasugata

exhibition: What Resonates Through Us — Echoes in Overtones

location: Galerie Ovo, Taipei, Taiwan | @galerieovo
dates: August 22nd to September 6th, 2025

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Nima Nabavi brings together a constellation of radiant energies that converge with structural order in his solo exhibition Sunrise at the Vortex in Dubai. On view at The Third Line, Roswell2223 forms a gravitational center, laying out a monumental hand-drawn piece that stretches across an 18-foot-long canvas. Saturated with color and encrusted with detail, it distills the core of Nabavi’s practice which seeks to evoke awe, resolve inner resonance, bridge abstraction with emotion, and manifest precise complexities and natural energies through geometry.

Created over the course of a year during a residency in New Mexico, Roswell2223 marks the furthest the Iranian artist has ever pushed the limits of his process. The result is a sprawling, crystalline composition that channels a spiritual intensity and meditative clarity. While the exhibition presents a range of works — some meticulously hand-rendered, others made with the aid of architectural pen plotters — they all maintain a sense of transcendence. Whether plotted by machine or drawn line by line, Nabavi’s geometries work somewhat like elusive discoveries. ‘These patterns, structures and geometries carry a magical appeal that I’m not getting any closer to understanding,’ he tells designboom. ‘It feels more like archaeology to me – I’m finding and exploring these visual phenomena, not inventing them.’ We spoke with the artist to learn more about the methods, philosophies, and intentions behind Roswell2223 and how they resonate with the introspective and technical undercurrents of Sunrise at the Vortex.

image by Ismail Noor | all images courtesy of The Third Line

Nima nabavi on the precision and labor of his process

Roswell2223 was created during Nima Nabavi’s time at the Roswell Artist-in-Residence program in the US, where, for the first time, he notes, he had the space and time to expand the bounds of his intricate visual language at such an expansive level. ‘I bought the largest roll of canvas I could find, the biggest ruler I could find (9 feet long), and hundreds of markers in 17 colors,’ he shares with us. ‘I then rolled out the canvas on the floor and started working on the piece line by line.’

He describes this layered and considered process as physically taxing but spiritually immersive, and led partly by chance despite the calculated geometries, as he recalls not knowing exactly how the piece might turn out. ‘I was kneeling, squatting, sitting and bending over for hours on end, but being able to literally sit inside the work and be engulfed by it also brought so much joy.’  The resulting composition measures 18 feet by 6 feet, across which the layers upon layers of lines form a crystalline mapping of the universe that invites viewers, too, to loose themselves in. True to the exhibition’s name, the romantic vibrancy of the work and its motion exudes a sense of soothing energy.

Roswell2223 forms a gravitational center at the exhibition, Sunrise at the Vortex | image by Tonee Harbert

working between manual and mechanical precision

The surrounding works on view as part of Sunrise at the Vortex further reflect Nima Nabavi’s explorations of the connection between himself and the universe, bringing together works he created in makeshift studios in Roswell, New York, Los Angeles, and Dubai. Some, in contrast to the centerpiece’s laborious methodologies, are machine-assisted and produced using architectural pen plotters, a tool Nabavi only recently incorporated into his practice. Among them, Source Code closely echoes the idyllic, meditative hues of Roswell2223, though on a much smaller canvas.

Within a rounded surface densely marked by over 4 million plotted dots, resembling a sun about to set or rise, the artist notes that there is a level of detail, complexity, and saturation that he would have not have been able to achieve manually. Speaking then on this shift toward the mechanical, he reflects that these plotters are a tool that frees his imagination from the constraints of the hand. ‘It removes arbitrary limitations and opens me up to thinking about my work in a more expansive way,’ he adds. ‘Instead of considering how to reduce my ideas so that they are humanly ‘doable’, I’m expanding my tools to match the ideas… It’s a total paradigm shift – I can use alternate building blocks like curved lines in my works, I can saturate colors like never before, and I’m able to experiment faster.’

a monumental hand-drawn piece stretching across an 18-foot-long canvas | image by Tonee Harbert

translating energy into structured forms and geometries

This balance between control and joyful discovery pulses throughout the exhibition, which as a whole offers a continuum of experimentation across dualities. Between the intimate and the industrial, and the intuitive and the algorithmic, Sunrise at the Vortex embraces a spiritual luminosity that persists across the show’s various structural forms and scales. Even as Nabavi’s process becomes increasingly complex and precise in these abstract expressions, the work retains an elemental radiance that draws you in.

‘These patterns, structures, and geometries carry a magical appeal that I’m not getting any closer to understanding. It feels more like archaeology to me — I’m finding and exploring these visual phenomena, not inventing them,’ he tells designboom.

the vibrancy of the work exudes a sense of soothing energy | image by Tonee Harbert

Nima Nabavi brings together radiant energies that converge with structural precision | image by Tonee Harbert

the creative process was physically taxing but spiritually immersive | video still by Tonee Harbert

‘These patterns, structures and geometries carry a magical appeal’, he says | video still by Tonee Harbert

Source Code echoes the idyllic, meditative hues of Roswell2223, on a much smaller canvas | image by Altamash Urooj

marked densely by over 4 million dots plotted by a machine | image by Altamash Urooj

Sunrise at the Vortex reflects Nima Nabavi’s explorations of intricate geometries | image by Ismail Noor

project info:

name: Roswell2223

artist: Nima Nabavi | @nimanothome

location: The Third Line, Dubai

exhibition: Sunrise at the Vortex

dates: 15th June—3rd August 2025

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With fabric as her brush and sunlight as her collaborator, Rachel Hayes transforms architectural spaces and natural landscapes into shifting compositions of color and movement with her large-scale, textile-based installations.

Hayes inserts vivid, translucent forms into places as varied as museum atriums, desert dunes, glass conservatories, and ancient ruins. Her latest projects span a major commission for the Chicago Botanic Garden, a flag flying above Ballroom Marfa in Texas, and her participation in the group exhibition Soft Structures through August 8th, 2025, curated by Jen Wroblewski. Hayes’ process begins on site. ‘I always chase the light, and I always trust my instincts first!’ she tells designboom, reflecting on the design process. ‘My first visual response to a site is usually the best, and I have learned to trust my intuition deeply. I like to think about how someone will move throughout a space and interact with my work. Standard methods of experiencing an artwork are less interesting to me. With my installations, there is no front or back, top or bottom in the traditional sense.’

White Sands 2014 | all images courtesy of Rachel Hayes

texture, durability, transparency, color and light form the pieces

Trained in fiber and painting, Hayes blends painterly sensibility with sculptural scale. Her site-specific work often responds to the physical context of its location, not only the surrounding architecture or landscape but also the light. ‘I take note of the sun’s position throughout a space to see where it peaks through, offering a chance to create reflections and color-casted shadows,’ she explains. ‘Once I have decided how I want the piece to look, I bring in a practical side of my brain to engineer the construction and solve any installation issues. Depending on the demands of the site and lifespan of the work, I choose the appropriate materials.’

The Tulsa-based artist considers texture, durability, transparency, and the emotional resonance of color. ‘I am always thinking about texture, lightness, contrast, and color. I know how to pick materials that will work with light, and that’s important to a lot of my indoor installations. Outdoor installations are more complicated, because longevity and weather are players, but this also makes it an exciting experience. I hope these exhilarating experiences come across in my photos,’ she shares with us.

Tulsa Urban Core Art Project

Ephemeral Landscapes and Chromatic Rhythms

The artist uses photography to document the ephemeral nature of her work. Rachel Hayes often installs her fabric pieces temporarily in outdoor settings before removing them, including the gypsum dunes of White Sands National Park in New Mexico, ancient ruins in Turkey, and the Flint Hills of Kansas. These moments are fleeting, but the imagery lingers, capturing what she describes as ‘subtle and ephemeral nuances such as the changing light, shifting shadows, or the sound of fabric rustling in the breeze.’

Color is central to Hayes’ language, intuitive but never arbitrary. ‘Let’s call it controlled intuition. I will decide on a palette (the control), and within that group of colors, I’ll play (intuitively) with translucence, opacity, and tonal variation. I love a good staccato and rhythm within a piece to keep an eye roving about. I guess you could say that I think of color in musical terms.’ Her chromatic decisions often reflect the site or institution hosting the work. ‘I do take a site or venue into consideration. I have an installation opening August 23rd at the Georgia Museum of Art. My color references were in response to a few pieces in the museum’s collection: a Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass window, and paintings by Sam Gilliam, Joan Mitchell, Elaine DeKooning, Manierre Dawson, and Albert Eugene Gallatin. These beautiful constraints present me with endless color compositions,’ she says.

Columbus, Georgia

Art That Lives in Open-Air and Transitional Spaces

Rachel Hayes has long sought to bring her installations into unexpected places, beyond the white cube, toward more porous environments. Her work has been shown at SculptureCenter in New York, the deCordova Museum in Massachusetts, the Everson Museum in Syracuse, and the Roswell Museum in New Mexico, as well as in galleries from Los Angeles to Istanbul. She has collaborated with Italian fashion house Missoni on a solo exhibition during Milan Design Week, and more recently exhibited with ISTANBUL’74 during Contemporary Istanbul and at NOMAD in Capri. In 2023, she was invited to present a textile installation at the ancient Agora of Smyrna during the Turkish Textile Biennial.

Her dream sites aren’t only galleries but transitional or open-air spaces. ‘I would love to work in more large glass atriums, small alleyways, under piers by an ocean, and always more prairie grasslands.,’ she states. These are places where her textiles can respond to wind, weather, and light, where the work is never static, always changing with the day. Ultimately, Hayes sees her work as a way of engaging the senses—and the body. ‘I’m interested in how the power of scale and the ordered construction of bright color can attract a viewer’s physical response,’ she reflects. But beyond that initial pull, her pieces ask for deeper feeling. ‘I hope they will also experience more subtle and ephemeral nuances, such as the changing light, shifting shadows, or the sound of fabric rustling in the breeze,’  Rachel Hayes comments.

in Edge of Becoming, two panels span 100 feet on the grounds of Fruitlands Museum

Garden Loom, New Mexico

Little Barn Outside

Mirror Lake

Arcosanti, Arizona

Nomad Capri | image by ISTANBUL_74

Black Cube and the Biennial of the Americas | image by Third Dune

Black Cube and the Biennial of the Americas | image by Third Dune

Cloud Report, South Dakota

Whitesands National Park, New Mexico

Whitesands National Park, New Mexico

Backyard Path, Chris and Ben’s house

Fairfield, Iowa

project info:

artist: Rachel Hayes | @rachelbhayes

current exhibitions:

name: Soft Structures
location: Jane Lombard Gallery, New York
curator: Jen Wroblewski
dates: June 27th – August 8th, 2025

name: Patterned by Nature

location: Chicago Botanic Garden

dates: June 7th – September 21st, 2025

name: Looking Through a Sewn Sky 

location: Georgia Museum of Art
dates: August 23rd, 2025 — July 30th, 2027

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