Stephen Burks: Man Made

Stephen Burks | source: Dwell.com

The Studio Museum in Harlem is pleased to present Stephen Burks: Man Made, a unique project that furthers industrial designer Stephen Burks’s ongoing exploration of the global economy of artisanal craft. Inspired by Burks’s collaboration with Senegalese basket weavers based in New York and Dakar, as well as projects with artisans in South Africa, Peru and India, Man Made starts with the traditional basket-weaving process as its core concept. During the exhibition, the Museum’s galleries will be transformed into a workshop where New York-based weavers and artisans will create a series of functional and experimental objects and installations conceived by Burks.

The exhibition will also include photographic and video documentation of Burks’s travels, as well as his own drawings and prototypes, so that audiences can experience the entire design process from inspiration to completion. On one hand, Man Made is an interactive design exhibition, and on the other, it is an active platform for working with a collective of West African artisans whose objects and presence have become a significant part of the Harlem community.

More information on www.studiomuseum.org

About Stephen Burks

For years there’s been a divide between manufactured first-world luxury items and handmade third-world crafts, but industrial designer Stephen Burks believes that the future of design lies within that diminishing void.

Since founding his New York studio, Readymade Projects, in 1997, he has developed ongoing projects with Aid to Artisans and the Nature Conservancy, imbuing commercial commissions for clients like Moroso and Cappellini with the cultural identities of the developing world.

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