This affair and the false accusations made against me are especially troublesome and difficult for me because they convey an image of me that is totally, diametrically opposite to who I am,” he wrote in a statement sent to ELLE DECOR. “It is our intent to listen and learn from this experience as our objective was not to create division or conflict.” A global understanding isn’t necessary to reckon with racism-Sala could have looked at Italy’s own history of colonialism.Īdario, the architect, has responded to criticism with a call for-you guessed it-dialogue. “We didn’t perceive these pieces on a global scale and that is our mistake,” she said in a statement. The curator, Sala, has in her defense said that one of the figurines was from the Caucasus. It’s really a question of how homogenous cultures like Italy marginalize people of non-European descent, how they have done that historically, and how they continue to today,” Burks says. “You see a European architect making a literal cage to contain the historical racist objects of the past, presenting them in 2023 as if they still have relevance. “Federica and I have been friends for nearly 15 years,” says Burks, who says he demanded an explanation immediately after seeing her presentation. Their joint Instagram post attracted immediate attention. The only people to call it out as offensive were Jenny Nguyen, an Asian-Australian woman, of Hello Human designer Stephen Burks, a Black American man and founder of industrial design studio Stephen Burks Man Made whose work has appeared in ELLE DECOR (most recently in our October 2022 print issue) and the curators behind Anava Projects. Predictably, given its scale and the prominence of the designers and curator involved, the Campo Base show was given a spotlight in press about Milan Design Week. The press release reads: “Massimo Adario interpreted the concept of intimacy in a room called “Il Collezionista” (The Collector), an abstract yet cozy setting where the weather unfolds among a selection of objects that mirror the personality of the collector.” The objects on view are part of Adario’s own personal collection, here presented as the cherished objects of a fictional collector. Like editor Grace Coddington’s Mammy cookie jars, they were presented as neutral-even fun-objects. In Italian architect Massimo Adario’s room, Murano glass figurines produced in the 1920s and depicting racist caricatures of Black, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Indigenous people as subhuman were placed on display in an incongruously chic vitrine, with no readily accessible context. “It's really a question of how homogenous cultures like Italy marginalize people of non-European descent.” Several pavilions were thoughtful, considered, and even beautiful. The press release states that the spaces are intended to offer “visitors a moment of respite, reflection, and calmness.” The presentation was held in a cavernous venue, divided by curtains and made atmospheric by sound emitting from hidden speakers, inviting visitors to experience a sense of “domestic intimacy” in a pseudo-public space. This year during Milan Design Week, Italian curator Federica Sala presented a group show called Campo Base, described as a “manifesto for interiors” and comprising six discrete pavilions, each designed and produced by a different Italy-based architect. Is it for white people to understand the crushing effects of casual racism? Or to understand why racist tropes and practices should be eradicated from Western design? Is the end goal to make life and work easier for Black designers, editors, and architects? If so, that end goal is nowhere near being met, though the effects of racism are quite obvious. Rarely, though, are we asked what the end goal of this dialogue is. For the last three years, dialogue surrounding race has been encouraged within the design world by the largely white architects, designers, curators, and editors that have held its keys.
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