For Salone del Mobile, luxury luggage stalwart Rimowa has asked rapidly emerging American artist and designer Dozie Kanu to create a multi-platform response to its intelligent travel archetype. His cross-discipline reply spans print, digital and installation, in a forward-thinking experiment fit for the grand (and jam-packed) stage of the most inspiring design fair in the world.
Created in collaboration with Milanese contemporary art magazine and creative studio Kaleidoscope, the event marks Rimowa’s Milan Design Week debut, in which three intertwining activations link to celebrate both Kanu’s unique point of view, and Rimowa’s longstanding commitment to design.
Dozie Kanu, holding a sheet of Rimowa aluminium
The first of which, a short documentary directed by British filmmaker Sam Hiscox, offers an intimate look at Kanu at work in his new Lisbon studio. It depicts the artist-designer crafting a new series of furniture from the aluminium sheets famously used to make Rimowa’s enduring luggage. This lightweight and flexible material has been a travel companion to the design-conscious since 1937.
In the film, we journey with Kanu across the city, in search of inspiration, through its brutalist landmarks, like the skatepark at Palacio de Justicia, and engineering masterworks like the Vasco da Gama bridge. ‘Frequent travel is my way of constantly evolving,’ he says.
The film is being premiered in one of Milan’s newest (and many) social-cum-cultural hotspots, Spazio Maiocchi, within an environment cast from Kanu’s imagination, and realised by Bureau Borsche. Alongside a photo-zine from Kaleidoscope’s new June issue, Kanu’s sculptural-functional works made from the Rimowa material palette are on display, together creating a multi-level experience of luxury travel and design prowess, in 4D.
Furniture from Kaleidoscope x Rimowa present Dozie Kanu, 2018
INFORMATION
Until 22 April. For more information, visit the Rimowa website
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