Christien Meindertsma
Christien Meindertsma explores the life of products and raw materials. For her first book, Checked Baggage (2004), Meindertsma purchased a container filled with a week's worth of objects confiscated at security checkpoints in Schiphol Airport after 9/11. She meticulously categorized all 3267 items and photographed them on a white seamless background. Meindertsma’s second book, PIG 05049 (2007), is an extensive collection of photographic images that documents an astounding array of products that different parts of an anonymous pig called 05049 could support. With this book, Christien Meindertsma reveals lines that link raw materials with producers, products and consumers that have become so invisible in an increasingly globalized world. With her designs Meindertsma aims to regain understanding of processes that have become so distant in industrialization. Her work has been exhibited in MoMA (New York), The V&A (London) and the Cooper Hewitt Design museum (New York). For her book PIG 05049 she won three Dutch Design Awards (2008) as well as an Index award (2009). For the Flax Chair she won last year the Dutch Design Award and the Future Award.
Maurizio Montalti
Strongly characterised by a creative trans-disciplinary approach and rooted in a collaborative, research-based and experimental practice, Maurizio Montalti’s work tends toward the exploration of the design discipline, aiming to investigate and reflect upon contemporary (material) culture, thereby creating new opportunities and visions both for the (creative) industry and for the broader social spectrum. He often actively collaborates with professionals from other disciplines in a co-creative process, to arrive at thought-provoking solutions and design outcomes. His work spans across various mediums, previously exploring themes in relation to biotechnology, anthropology, bio- diversity, the ecosystem and the human impact on it, recent production technologies, and the importance of a symbiotic entanglement between natural life-forms, for an alternative advancement of society. The fascination for the micro-scale, together with a holistic vision of the world as a macro-organism animated by symbiotic relationships are some of Montalti’s main drives.
