After Milan, Paris will host an exhibition during "Design Week" in September, conceived by HEAD-Geneva to showcase, in an original way, some of the women designers forgotten by history.
The exhibition " Spirits. Excellent for the head", conceived by first-year students in the Master Espace et Communication program at HEAD-Geneva, celebrates the spirit and souls of women designers with a series of glasses and cocktails. In an installation listing over 260 female designers, including Ray Kaiser-Eames (USA), Daisy Ginsberg (South Africa/Great Britain), Eileen Gray (Ireland), Anab Jain (India), Sophie Taeuber-Arp (Switzerland), Magdalene Odundo (Kenya) and Valentine Schlegel (France), a tribute is paid to these international creators often overlooked by most art history dictionaries.
The exhibition plays with words, "Spirits" meaning alcohol, spirit and soul. That's why the students decided to celebrate the spirits and souls of women designers with a series of glasses and cocktails. They were inspired by an editorial in "Farmer's Cabinet", a publication dating back to 1803, in which the journalist first mentions the curative properties of "cocktail" in the following terms: "Drank a glass of cocktail - excellent for the head".
Pulled by the HEAD-Geneva locomotive, the customized carriages of a Swiss model train transport the glasses as they circulate through a custom-designed scenography. Revisiting the constructive principle of Ray Kaiser-Eames and Charles Eames' Giant House of Cards (1953), an XXL-sized deck of cards, the photographs of the glasses interlock to create a landscape of architecture and three-dimensional structures.
Last April, during Milano Design Week at the House of Switzerland, a group exhibition was held featuring a series of seven different blown glasses, each inspired by a little-known designer, accompanied by the same number of signature cocktails created for the occasion.
A new opportunity has arisen in September (7 to 11), during "Design Week" in Paris, to convey HEAD-Geneva's message of the urgent need to rebalance the history of design in the fields of education, exhibitions and major trade events.
Head-Geneva's Master of Space and Communication is an experimental design program that, through inquiry-based practices, explores the interstices between object, film, performance, media and space as an interface for communication and experimentation.
For more information: https://www.hesge.ch/head/