COALITION 2: COALITION OF DESIGNERS

Organized and curated jointly with PIN-UP Magazine, this coalition will bring together numerous designers active in New York, and will discuss the role the city plays in and through their work. Designers Margot DeMarco, Luam Melake, Sam Stewart, and Nao Tamura will present their work, and will be joined by PIN-UP’s Felix Burrichter for a conversation.

Margot DeMarco is an artist, designer and educator based in New York City. Her work exists in many forms, including: sculpture, furniture, housewares, video, puppetry, photography, window displays, props, illustration and writing. Despite working across disparate mediums, Margot’s art contains a consistent thread of shrewd irreverence towards the world of objects.

Luam Melake creates handwoven sculptures and furniture using material combinations that reference her interdisciplinary interests in craft, industrial design, fine art and architecture as well as research in the fields of anthropology and psychology. Exploring the psychological impacts of objects is the central focus of her work.

Sam Stewart is a self-taught furniture artist and designer. He is an aspiring member of the Chapel Hill Woodturners Association. His work resembles and functions as household furniture and domestic objects. As sculptures, they often take on animistic qualities that border on the absurd and whimsical, but also the slightly perverse. He is interested in design that elicits a heightened simplicity and exaggerated satisfaction of looking, as much he wants to draw out awkward, more anecdotal encounters with the designed object.

Nao Tamura is a designer whose practice spans product, lighting, furniture, and spatial design. Drawing from both Tokyo and New York’s creative cultures, her work explores the balance between nature and technology, emotion and function, and Eastern and Western sensibilities. Through her studio, Nownao Inc., she collaborates with international brands such as Issey Miyake, Porro, Artek, and Lexus. Tamura’s work has been exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, Salone del Mobile, and the Kyocera Museum, and has received numerous international design awards.

The COALITIONS series is organized by Bart-Jan Polman, GSAPP’s Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs and Curator of the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery. In recognition of the urgency not merely to observe change but to choreograph it, GSAPP has reimagined its public programming not as a passive stage for presentation, but as an active platform for coalition-building and alliance-making among individuals and organizations united by shared priorities and overlapping engagements.