Porosity Kabari

18 October - 8 December 2019

Trent Jansen  Richard Goodwin  Ishan Khosla

Porosity Kabari is the result of an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, collaborative project between Trent Jansen, Richard Goodwin, and Ishan Khosla. The project challenged the trio to produce furniture and object pieces made from materials and craftsmanship sourced solely from the Chor Bazaar (thieves market) and Dharavi (the largest slum on earth) in Mumbai, India.

India is a place where resourcefulness is part of the everyday. The market neighbourhoods where this project took place are where many of India’s useful objects end up. It is also where they are often given a second life – car panels are transformed into ad hoc cookers and old clothing is quilted into rugs for snake charmers.

The setting and parameters of this project challenged the designers to make do with what was at hand and in doing so Porosity Kabari presents an alternative model for sustainable design that is relevant to all of us, living anywhere. It investigates the cycle of use, reuse (and further reuse)—and how we can, quite simply, use one thing to make another thing.

The exhibition explores cultural conditions and social structures specific to India but perhaps familiar to many developing nations. The idealised notion of ‘progress’ is put into question, as is the cycle of consumerism and desire in globalised India. Porosity Kabari celebrates craft but highlights how craftspeople are undervalued in contemporary Indian society.

The objects produced for Porosity Kabari were made outside the industrialised system. Improvisation was the applied technique for making. Ideas were generated and design decisions were made on the fly, shaped by the daily observations and moods of the designers. ‘Porosity Kabari’ champions the ad hoc and builds appreciation of the makeshift.  It reminds us to look to and learn from those countries where, for many, resources are scare and resourcefulness is a necessity.

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