Human Nests and Other Highlights of African Design
Designer Porky Hefer's organic capsules are part of Grains of Paradise: Contemporary African Design in collaboration with Southern Guild, a group exhibition at a gallery specializing in contemporary design.
Nests sized for humans crowd the front of Tribeca’s R & Company, with a step ladder and curves of woven cane beckoning as quiet retreats (although a sign firmly states “PLEASE DO NOT CLIMB”). The organic capsules by designer Porky Hefer are part of Grains of Paradise: Contemporary African Design in collaboration with Southern Guild, a group exhibition at a gallery specializing in contemporary design.
R & Company has regularly highlighted international designers not frequently shown in New York, such as an exhibition on Korean design in 2013 and Brazilian furniture designer Joaquim Tenreiro last January. Grains of Paradise is a collaboration with the Cape Town–based gallery Southern Guild and its principals Trevyn and Julian McGowan. Alongside the hanging basketwork by Porky Hefer are towering cabinets by Dokter and Misses of Johannesburg, creature-like furniture of repurposed carved wood and braided leather by Babacar Niang of Senegal, and elaborate ceramics involving sculpted animals by Ardmore of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
The title Grains of Paradise might seem random with no seeds in sight, but it’s derived from the West African spice Aframomum melegueta. Used as both a medicinal and ritual plant in Africa, it was introduced to the West as a prized type of pepper. In that vein, the exhibition suggests an exchange of influences, such as the Kassena series of cabinets by Dokter and Misses with the flavor of midcentury modernism in their bright colors, hidden compartments, and tall rounded shapes, mingling with the influence of angular patterns on the earth architecture of the Kassena tribe. The ceramics by the Ardmore collective, established in the Drakensberg Mountains by Fée Halsted as a place for studio training with a built-in market for its artists, has something almost rococo in the ornate teapots and vessels where the flora and fauna of Africa are used as playful handles and decorations. Some of the chairs and tables by Babacar Niang appear to balance on feet, the curving of their forms seeming to border between object and animal. As with many design installations, Grains of Paradise can feel as much like showroom as an exhibition, but from those buoyant nests by Porky Hefer hovering hugely in the windows to the more subtle and strange work by Niang lurking in the game, it’s an animated demonstration of some of the design happening in Africa that’s not often shown in New York.
Grains of Paradise: Contemporary African Design in collaboration with Southern Guild continues at R & Company (82 Franklin Street, Tribeca, Manhattan) through April 30.
