Set Margins' publications Libros

An artist's inventory of offhand and everyday anti-Asian language In this slim artist's book, Utrecht-based artist Seulbin Roh (born 1996), of Asian descent, collects a variety of discriminatory comments and questions she has heard and overheard in the course of daily life--casually racist or sexist language that Asian people endure constantly in Europe and the US. "I can't imagine myself being in a relationship with an Asian man"; "is it really tight down there?"; "I like Korean food better than Chinese food. You know what food means here, right?"--these and many more offhand remarks are compiled by Roh and laid bare across the pages of this book to starkly present their banality and their racism. The book reads in English starting from the front and Korean from the back.

How people sit and are an anthropology of chair design The anatomy of our bodies invites sitting; but do we design seats in the same way? Has our means of sitting been colonized by modern design? And how is the culturally various act of sitting itself reflected in this functional commodity? Italian artist Matteo Guarnaccia’s (born 1993) Cross Cultural Chairs is a research-based design project “about the cultural context of furniture, understanding how globalization is shaping design around the world.” He writes, “it’s an exploration that lies between social and technical aspects of chairs.” To execute this project, Guarnaccia visited eight different countries to conduct research and talk to local design studios, ultimately collaborating with them to portray each culture in the form of a chair. Cross Cultural Chairs plumbs the hidden depths of furniture design and the ways in which cultural norms assert themselves through functional commodities, opening up a conversation about identity, community and expression through chairs.