P004 → Take A Seat
“National Style” Chair, 2024, acrylic on found pine chair, laser-cut wood, papier mâché, and cardboard edges, cotton ribbon, marbled-paper, plastic bow, ceramic flower handles, glass pebbles and plastic jewels, 120 x 47 x 50 cm, £2,600.
I made this chair in order to re-interpret Portuguese “National Style” furniture, characterised by dark, lustrous Brazilian rosewood, barley-twist turnings (torcidos) and gilded brass escutcheons. I used found and recycled materials like METRO newspapers and packaging cardboard, and incorporated motifs from Indigenous Amazonian rock-paintings, Japanese suminagashi, and Islamic-Iberian arabesques to interrogate the transatlantic colonial extraction, slavery, and cultural interactions on which Portuguese luxury objects depend(ed).
Installation shots of “National Style” Chair in Take a Seat at Bow Arts, Shaftesbury Avenue, October 2024. Photographs by Alessandro Mariscalco.