Text by CLOT Magazine
To be able to express ourselves is a wondrous ability with which we humans have been bestowed. The faces we make, how we dress, dance, and make music all represent who we are as individuals and also capture a moment in time; our emotional states. Next month, this concept of “emotional states” will be explored by 40 different countries, cities, and territories as part of London’s 2018 instalments of the Design Biennale.
From the 4th to the 23rd of September, this exhibit of international proportions will display leading regional design talent at Somerset House in Covent Garden. The Biennale seeks to demonstrate how design influences our emotions and every aspect of our lives.
Installations will cumulatively probe at seven distinct emotional states, anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise, chosen due to their universality in the animal kingdom, as outlined in Charles Darwin’s book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal. The works showcased will be interactive, prompting viewers to consider the ways in which design actively communicates with us.
This year’s Advisory Committee and Jury comprises several well-established experts and will award Medals to those design teams that provided the most significant contributions. Jury members include Paola Antonelli, Director of Research and Development at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Dr Tristram Hunt, Director of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and Hadeel Ibrahim, Board Director of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, based in London.
An installation worth checking out might be the Refugee’s Pavilion, which will present objects designed by displaced people. This crucial contribution to 2018’s London Design Biennale will investigate an incredibly sensitive and topical corner of the design, ever-important, seeing as how survival tools are designed can irrevocably alter how human migration develops.
Nicole L’huillier, recently featured in CLOT Magazine, is collaborating in the Greek pavilion. The kinetic installation called ΑΝΥΠΑΚΟΗ (Disobedience) will be the centrepiece project on display in the courtyard of Somerset House.
