RECOVERING LOST STORIES THROUGH DESIGN
Honored in 2023 during his participation in the Design Parade Hyères, designer and researcher Yassine Ben Abdallah has created a unique body of work that draws on his native Réunion Island while also evoking its European colonial past. Acumen took advantage of his participation in the "Dutch, More or Less" exhibition at the Nieuwe Institut to discuss four of his projects with him. An interview.
THE BITTERSWEET MEMORY OF THE PLANTATION
(2022)
« I wanted to work on the history of Réunion, and particularly on the history of sugarcane plantations, which truly shaped the island. During my research, I realized that there were very few, if any, material archives belonging to the enslaved communities who worked there. My project was born from this absence, but also from this question: “How do we create memory as a community when we no longer have objects to bear witness to a story?” I then began working with the only archive available to me: sugar itself. I reworked tools used by enslaved people, such as machetes, which continue to be used by sugarcane planters today. [The machete] carries an interesting ambiguity, since it is primarily an agricultural tool that allowed displaced communities to “re-indigenize” themselves by reworking the land. It's common for every family to have this tool in their garden. And not a week goes by without hearing in the newspapers about someone being attacked with a machete. It's an object that both connects and disconnects, becoming a weapon that still carries with it a history of colonial violence. »
ĀLAMĀRĪ (2024)
WITH MATERRA-MATANG AND CABINETMAKER AYMERIC DELMAS
« Ālamārī was born from a residency I undertook on Réunion Island at the Ravate company, which belongs to a large Indo-Muslim family. Very few public archives exist concerning this community, which settled on the island in the 19th century. One of the only ways to access these archives was to collect them from families, including the Ravate family, but also from other Indo-Muslims. To materialize this, I created this cabinet to house the family stories and archives. It, like the materials from which it is made, was intended to tell these stories. Thus, it is made of tamarind wood, which is endemic to Réunion and which allowed the patriarch of the Ravate family to start his business by trading in it. Inside, the three shelves evoke the triptych that organizes the Indo-Muslim community: family, business, and religion. »
THE CHAIR SITTING SOCIETY (2023)
WITH MILENO GUILLOREL-OBREGÓN AND NADINE DUTREUIL
« This chair was born out of a constraint I encountered during my participation in the Design Parade Hyères (2023). Once selected, we learned somewhat unexpectedly that there was a new partnership with Tectona and that each of us was asked to produce a chair. At the time, I was in Réunion, a little annoyed, to be honest, by this last-minute constraint, but especially by this question of the chair, which is very recurrent in the design world. It's a symbol I wanted to explore, because many cultures, including my own, sit not on a chair, but on the ground. And through extensive reading, I learned that the chair represents a relationship of elevation to the ground, a legacy of the throne. Ultimately, all of this stems from a culture of elites who had the opportunity to sit in this way, and which, little by little, became more widespread. The question of the chair in design was also that of the quintessential individual object, one that closely resembles the human body while simultaneously shaping it. And I wanted to challenge this narrative of a seat that elevates, individualizes, and excludes, with the sézi, a woven mat found in Réunion, which is a collective seat because, when unrolled, it allows several people to sit together. This sézi is tied around the chair's frame, prompting us to question what we are sitting on, and what, ultimately, we are not allowing when we sit in this way. »
NEW PLANTER'S CHAIR (2024)
WITH MILENO GUILLOREL-OBREGÓN
« The Chair Sitting Society project led us to another, with Mileno, for a commission for the Nieuwe Institut in Rotterdam, on the subject of the planter's chair. It can be found in India, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, and in pretty much every colonized country that had plantations. This seat is quite fascinating because it's ubiquitous, a bit like the plastic chair, and it's hard to know where it comes from. It's also very unusual because it resembles an obstetrician's chair, as it allows the legs to be spread apart and placed on its footrests. The planter's chair was exclusive to white men, and thanks to its reclining position, it allowed them to lose themselves in the ceiling or the sky, so as not to see their servants. This is quite interesting because this posture was completely inappropriate in Europe, but was tolerated in the colonies. We found a copy on leboncoin, dismantled it, and then redesigned it using aluminum profiles. Our aim was to explore the concept of Dutch design, specifically Rotterdam modernist design, where modern architecture was built around resources like aluminum and glass—resources that ultimately followed the same path as those used during the colonial era. We wanted to connect the continuity of these narratives and this foundation by examining the relationships that continue to exist within a modern design that makes a clean break with this history. »
"DUTCH, MORE OR LESS"
NEW INSTITUTE
MUSEUMPARK 25, ROTTERDAM (NETHERLANDS)
UNTIL MARCH 30, 2025
YASSINEBENABDALLAH.COM
NIEUWEINSTITUUT.NL
