Artist: Bram Van Breda, both works from their exhibition “BONANZA, A Diorama of the Near.”

Principles of slow design used: EXPAND & REFLECT

In the two works pictured above the artist utilizes objects from their surroundings to create scenes/installation works. These works were created during a residency and they really tried to evoke what is “near” to them, meaning their everyday surroundings that we don’t think much about. They contextualize these things and dig deeper into the meaning of our surrounding objects, whether it be objects at home or at work. How do they affect our everyday lives, how are they made, what do we use them for, who makes these objects, and what environments are they apart of? The artist speaks of what is spatial and what is social, ideas of the privileged and under privileged and how these objects pertain to them. There are a lot of these connotations intertwined into the objects and scenes the artist puts together in the works pictured above. The artist specifically says they are confronting the physical, political, and social issues of their environment and overall community they reside in and how they contribute to those issues.

In the reading they define the principle Expand as “expressions of artifacts and environments beyond their perceived functionalities.” Specifically “perceived functionalities” caught my eye when reading about this principle as these works have a lot to do with environment, and even going as far as creating an environment. The artist confronts the ideas they wanted to portray by creating an environment from memory and how they interacted with it. They give deeper meaning and think more critically of the objects they interact with. Reflect is defined as contemplating about your surrounding environment/what you create. The artist does a lot of reflecting on how they themselves contribute to issues in their community and maybe even farther than that. They also speak about how the objects that surround us are created and assembled by people, and how these objects affect the lives of those people.