The Eternal Return
Homo Faber 2024 featured more than 800 objects from more than 70 countries (image: courtesy of Homo Faber).
“I've been asked if there was one thing the audience had to take away from Homo Faber 2024, what I would like it to be,” says Hanneli Rupert, vice-chair of the Michelangelo Foundation, the non-profit that organises the biennial festival of contemporary craft in Venice. “And I think that's hope. I think working with craft is a very unique space, because it actually does leave people with hope.”
Despite Rupert’s desire for hope, this year's festival has a potentially solemn theme: the journey of life and death. “I chose a simple theme that would resonate globally and simultaneously allow us to show for the first time works from around the world,” says Rupert. Art directed by film director Luca Guadagnino and Milanese architect Nicolò Rosmarini, Homo Faber 2024 displays objects from more than 70 countries, evidencing its efforts to platform crafts from outside of the biennial’s European base. “We [also] wanted to include more functional objects in the exhibition,” Rupert says. Spread over 10 rooms in Fondazione Giorgio Cini, a former monastery, the festival’s celebration of different aspects of life accommodates functional objects such as toys in the “childhood" room, globes in the “journeys” room, and urns in the “afterlife” room, alongside more purely decorative pieces.
Toys and other playful objects are exhibited in the “childhood” room (image: Giulio Ghirardi).
With more than 800 meticulously crafted objects exhibited on a route through the Fondazione that passes through secluded courtyards, pristine gardens and marble staircases, the festival revels in its own exquisiteness. The most extravagant display of all is the “celebration” room, which features a long dining table covered in a feast of tableware. A replica Renaissance painting covers the far wall, which is contrasted against the bubblegum pink pleated fabric that covers the remaining walls. On the table, blue and white ceramics by Uzbek craftsman Abdulvakhid Bukhoriy Karimov share a stage with a gold cactus-like bowl by Mexican artist Ana Hernandez, and jewel-toned glassware by Italian studio Nason Moretti. The mirrored surface of the table duplicates each object, making the spread feel infinite.
If the objects themselves seem innumerable, then considering how many pairs of hands contributed to making them feels almost impossible to comprehend. Underfoot in the celebration room, for example, is an abstract carpet designed by Guadagnino and Rosmarini, and produced by Jaipur Rugs in India. “Normally, there are around 120 people working on one of our carpets – three women hand weaving, and then more people get involved in the process of washing and cutting,” says Greg Foster, artistic director of Jaipur Rugs. But it’s hard to estimate how many people contributed to making the 25m carpet, which is the company’s largest commission to date, not to mention how many were involved in liaising its transport through Venice. “Each piece of the rug needed its own boat otherwise it would sink,” Foster says, his voice full of disbelief. “They needed a crane to get them onto the island.”
The “celebration” room featured a carpet designed by art directors Luca Guadagnino and Nicolò Rosmarini, produced by Jaipur rugs in India (image: Giulio Ghirardi).
The objects are only displayed with the name of the artisan, their country of origin, and a QR code leading to a web page for more information, but Homo Faber’s selection of artisans doing live demonstrations throughout the festival bring the crafts to life. “You start with rye straw, and then you split it open,” furniture maker Kim Jordan explains while demonstrating the process of straw marquetry. As he tears the straw, which is dyed a light turquoise, it slowly unzips into two pieces, making a satisfying clicking sound. “Then you flatten it, and it has this shiny outer skin,” he says, cutting the flattened straw into a pattern of overlapping half-moons that catch the light like the shell of an iridescent beetle. The technique was popularised by French furniture maker Jean-Michel Frank in the 1930s, and lends itself well to geometric art deco patterns, but Jordan has also experimented with more abstract patterns that resemble mottled snakeskin. “It’s a very fine thing made from very basic material,” Jordan says. “My mate calls me Rumplestiltskin, because I'm turning straw into gold.”
Another injection of passion comes from Homo Faber’s Young Ambassadors, a team of craft students and recent graduates who have volunteered to guide guests around the fair. Although they are all wearing uniforms, some hint at their expertise through accessories: Naomi Soni, who is studying instrument making, wears violin-shaped earrings, and Siyu Liu, an architect and basket weaver, has a ruffled hair piece that she wove herself. The Young Ambassadors bring a dynamism to the topic of crafts, which is often associated with unchanging tradition, and a similar breath of fresh air comes from the “dialogues” room, which displays objects borne out of collaborations. Here, master glassblower Pietro Viero teams up with designer Bethan Laura Wood to create glass lamps with neon stamens that glow like lightsabers, and historical silversmith Gani Argenterie joins forces with Studio Job to create a futuristic teapot that resembles a spaceship. The enthusiasm of emerging craftspeople and the possibilities for contemporary aesthetics give the impression that craft is alive and ever-evolving.
Furniture maker Kim Jordan uses dyed rye to create straw marquetry patterns (image: Wecandoo).
The festival also gives a platform to artisans who are demonstrating the social and political importance of craft, as well as their technical and aesthetic skill. In the “dreams” room, rows of mannequins in hooded Alaïa dresses hover above the water of a pool in the centre of the room like ghosts, surrounded by displays of masks from around the world. Dayra Benavides’s mask was originally created for the Black and White Carnival in the Nariño department of southwestern Colombia, and has a crown of hot pink hair, a beard of colourful pom-poms, and golden spirals framing its face. “In my opinion, the carnival is very sexist,” Benavides says. “The winners are always men, and women are afraid to participate.” Benavides broke tradition first by entering the carnival costume competition, then by winning it multiple times. “It was crazy, because we received a lot of bullying, a lot of scary things,” she says. “But thanks to what we are doing, there are more women taking risks. It’s amazing what art can do.”
Benavides’s craft is guided by three principles: bringing a woman’s perspective to carnival, using indigenous craft techniques, and treating traditional crafts with the academic rigour they deserve. The mask she has on display in Venice represents La Guaneña, a figure who is part of the folkloric heritage of Nariño. “She is a woman who likes to fly but also has her feet on the ground,” Benavides says. “She’s a guardian of the earth, of her people, of her identity.” Benavides sees parallels between herself and La Guaneña: “I like to dream, but I like for the things I dream to become real,” she says. “And I’m a guardian, I take care of my art and my heritage.” The mask has a papier-mâché skeleton that is painted with pasto, a resin extracted from the Mopa-Mopa tree, and its hair is made from paja toquilla, a palm-like plant which is traditionally used to make straw hats. Both of these natural techniques derive from the Pasto indigenous group, and were passed down to Benavides by her parents. “With the ornamentation on the face you feel the force of nature, the unbeatable creativity of it,” she says.
Dayra Benavides's masks are made using traditional indigenous techniques (image: Manuel Vallejo).
Crafts are often passed down through families, a practice the festival highlights in its “inheritance” room, which is dedicated to generational studios. Here, Spanish shoemaker Alfonso Muñoz’s hunting boots feature intricate patterns that make leather look like lace; Japanese artisan Yoichi Negishi’s elegant copper watering can has a slender tip crafted for bonsai care; and Korean father-son duo Chang-Young Park and Hyung-Park Park’s traditional silk and bamboo hats have a gauzy elegance. As part of the Homo Faber In Città programme, master glassmaker Simone Cenedese, who inherited his business from his father, demonstrates making a glass bowl in his studio in Murano. Spinning heated glass on the end of a stick like a parasol, he uses air and movement to create a rippled shape. Although his son assisted with the demonstration, he is not interested in continuing the business. “They say hope is the last thing to die,” Cenedese’s translator says jokingly, “so maybe he will come around.”
Whether skills are passed down through bloodlines or more formally through classes and apprenticeships, part of the appeal of craft is that it is intensely human, yet has the potential to never die. For this reason, the festival does elicit a feeling of hope, despite the gravity of Tom Von Kaenel and Clara Coujati’s architectural marble urn and Polish artisans Zuzanna Spaltabaka and Igor Jansen’s bone-like candelabra in the final “afterlife” room. Spirals are a recurring motif in Benavides’s work, and she references this shape when discussing how she passes along her skills by teaching craft to young children. “The spiral is the eternal return,” she says. “Everything which I receive, I give.” Fittingly, spirals have also traditionally represented the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Homo Faber’s journey of life looks mortality in the eye, and greets it with enduring beauty.
Words Helen Gonzalez Brown