I am not trying to say anything. But at the same time, I am
trying to say everything.” So claims industrial designer Karen
Chekerdjian, encapsulating within a single quote the ambiguity that
lies at the centre of her work.
Chekerdjian, who’s arguably
Lebanon’s most successful design export, is currently the subject of an
exhibition at Paris’s Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute).
Founded in 1980, the IMA is a collaboration between 18 Arab countries
and France, envisaged as a means of promoting cultural understanding of
the Arab world. Chekerdjian readily admits to having been entirely
shaped by the country she calls home, so it’s entirely fitting that she
should be showing here.
At the heart of the exhibition is a movie
that Chekerdjian has made about Beirut. “It shows my daily life, my
kids, my friends. It’s an opportunity to see Beirut through my eyes. And
the message is that you cannot put all Arabic countries in the same
bag,” she tells me. “The movie was very important. My work has nothing
to do with Europe, or with other countries in the region. It is very
specific to Beirut.”
While it’s difficult to imagine her doing
anything else, it took a while for Chekerdjian to find her calling. Her
trajectory into product and furniture design was, she admits,
“unsystematic”. Born in Beirut in 1970, she started her career in
advertising, working in film and graphic design at Leo Burnett Beirut,
before going on to co-found her own branding company. “I did a lot of
different things, from directing movies to graphic design,” she
explains. “But I felt like I needed more.”
In 1997, she moved to
Milan to pursue a master’s degree in industrial design at the famed
Domus Academy, under the guidance of Massimo Morozzi, one of the
founders of Archizoom. There was something about the three-dimensional
nature of product design that really appealed, she explains.
After
graduating, she tried to find work in Milan, but was repeatedly told
that she should think about opening her own studio. She returned to
Beirut in 2001, and did exactly that. “It was a tough decision,” she
admits. “There was no furniture industry in Beirut at the time. I had to
find a whole new way of working. I had to go towards handcrafted
designs, rather than industrial.”
In essence, Chekerdjian was at
the forefront of that first generation of designers who have transformed
Beirut into the region’s de facto design capital and garnered
international acclaim in the interim. “When I said I was an industrial
designer, people used to ask if I made machines,” she remembers with a
laugh. “We had to build a whole new field.”
But it wasn’t easy
shaping an entire design scene from scratch. She had to work closely
with local craftsmen, but imbue their work with a more contemporary
edge.
As mentioned, Chekerdjian is very precise about classifying
herself as a Lebanese designer, rather than Middle Eastern or Arab. The
influences, contradictions and circumstances inherent in the Beirut
experience are so specific, and have been so instrumental in shaping her
aesthetic, that she can’t be termed anything else. That’s not to say
that her objects are Lebanese in the traditional sense – there are no
folkloric or ornamental elements, she’s quick to point out – it’s just
that they’re born out of a very specific set of circumstances, in a very
specific place. “I had to work with very different production
techniques, which gives you a unique identity. I would have been a very
different designer if I had stayed in Milan.”
There have been restraints – plenty of them
– but “the restraints become a strength”, she says. And as any
designer operating out of Beirut will tell you, instability breeds
creativity. In Chekerdjian’s case, this has manifested itself as an
ambiguity that extends across her entire portfolio. She credits the
duality of the city – the fact that it’s in a constant state of flux and
that its inhabitants are aware that everything can change at any time –
as a driving force behind her work.
“All my work can be
described in lots of different ways,” she explains. “In the beginning,
it used to upset me that people were always asking: ‘What is this?’ But
that triggered something in me. It’s now part of who I am. With most of
my pieces, I don’t clarify what they are. You can see it how you want. I
leave that choice to the people who buy or look at my work.”
So
what looks like a plate could be an ashtray, and tables double as
sculptures. Iqar is an excellent case in point. Polished to a
mirror-like finish and made from a single sheet of aluminium
painstakingly folded by hand, the table, so beautiful in its angular
simplicity, is shaped like a plane. But is it a paper plane or a war
plane? “Depending on your own personal perspective, it can either be
very naive, or very adult,” Chekerdjian acknowledges.
Her
creations, predominantly limited-editions and fast becoming
collectibles, straddle the blurry line between art and design in new,
interesting ways. “The only difference between art and design is that
design has a function,” she says. “But functionality is not enough. It
has to say more. Design must leave a trace of our civilisation.”
Chekerdjian’s
design process is more akin to “anthropological research”, and doesn’t
necessarily begin with function. It can start instead with “a shape, a
thought, or a search for something”.
For the exhibition at the IMA, which is called Respiration
and is showing until August 28, Chekerdjian’s products sit within the
institute’s permanent collection, which spans millennia of Arabic art,
invention and design.
A red trail on the floor guides visitors through five sections. In Temporality,
Chekerdjian’s video homage to Beirut is displayed on four different
screens and can be viewed from four different chairs: Elephant,
Papillon, Grand Vague and Pouf. Each is designed by Chekerdjian and
promises to offer a slightly different perspective. For Archetype,
objects take their place in a room dedicated to Arab myths and history;
for Transform, the works on show question the distinction between
sculpture and furniture; for Transpose, pieces inspired by ancient
artefacts are displayed in a hall dedicated to sacred representations;
and in Transcend, objects intended as a commentary on form, gesture and
social critique are spread among cultural artefacts.
There’s much
room for reflection in these halls, but being given carte blanche by
the IMA was an important exercise in self-reflection for the designer
herself. “For me, it was a way to rethink all my work – to look at who I
am and what I am doing.”
