Disobedient Objects

Product Information

How to retain a level of honesty and energy when presenting these objects within a museum environment Made from scraps of material, these were sold, so provided economic support, and in the act of gathering to make them, the women found solidarity and collective strength.

Ceramic intervention on the V&A façade By Carrie Reichardt and the Treatment Rooms Collective, 2014The intervention on the steps and façade of the Museum was made in response to the exhibition Disobedient Objects. It reflects the idea of a people’s history of art and design from below, and it invites us to consider activist social movements as a significant part of our culture.Structure: ceramic tiles on a corroding metal body, abundance of mixed media embellishments, including wooden components This cannot work in all situations obviously, says van Balen. In Palestine, for instance, where the threats are real -- using humour is not exactly a straightforward thing, when battling a cause that can so often turn deadly. He points, however, to a movement in 2010 when Palestinians dressed like Na'vis around the release of James Cameron's film Avatar. Painted in blue, they compared themselves to the repressed Na'vi people. "That creative interpretation was very powerful because of the storytelling involved," said van Balen. This banner opposes the idea of a mere financial crisis, identifying capitalism as the source of climate chaos and ongoing inequality and injustice I had no idea how the exhibition design would look at future venues for Disobedient Objects, so the mounts would need to be easily adaptable.

We wanted to show the collective power these domestic objects can have when grabbed and repurposed with political intent," says Gavin Grindon, co-curator of Disobedient Objects, an exhibition that gathers together tools of protest from around the world. While shows of activist art are not uncommon, this is the first major exhibition to focus on the actual instruments of direct action. As co-curator Catherine Flood says, "It is design taken out of the hands of designers." As such, it has a refreshingly frank power, a collection of tools made or redeployed for specific – and often desperate – ends.Some exhibits employ the charm of something woven or crafted, such as the arpilleras, the appliqued textiles made first in Chile and then in other places, that commemorate people taken away by ruling regimes and other atrocities. With these, the labour and care taken in making them commands respect and disarms aggression.

As with all successful projects, time for comprehensive, collaborative planning is fundamental. Complex objects, second guessing the unknown and tight deadlines can add considerably to workloads. The lenders (some of whom needed to remain anonymous) and the object types were a little more unconventional than usual. For instance, we knew many of the objects had been produced in reaction to a particular event, made with materials at hand and, due to their use, were potentially quite fragile. Some of the challenges raised during early-stage group discussions included: This started off in Italy and was taken up in Britain and America by students who had seen them on social media.

Exhibition at the V&A exploring protest through design

made by Ed Hall for “UNITE”‚ which was the biggest march in North West England against the privatisation of the English National Health Service (NHS). (Photo courtesy Ed Hall) A cup and saucer, with a logo designed by Sylvia Pankhurst, took the campaign for votes for women into Edwardian drawing rooms Knowing when and what the difference is, is key to the success or failure of many movements. And so often, it hinges on the freedoms afforded a population at that moment in time. In Gaza, for instance, without the freedom of movement and political rights normally afforded a nation, how can a people launch a peaceful protest -- who will be listening to their needs? The title of the exhibition at the entrance was created from cable-ties affixed to an upside down crowd-control fence hung at the entrance of the gallery space. A large-scale representation of the history of barricades dominates the doors of the Porter Gallery. Each individual panel features one particular moment, from the French Revolution to the latest barricades seen in the Arab Spring and Ukraine.

Craft skills such as sewing will be represented by items including hand-stitched textiles from Chile that document political violence and a banner created for the Unite union in the UK. Now, to move on to the Zapatista Dolls; these are quite different for the process involved. Shortly before I started focusing entirely on Disobedient Objects, I was actually mount making for the Small Stories exhibition at the Museum of Childhood, where I made mounts for objects like this little guy here:All the objects bear a relation to the body, presented as the congealed memories of social protest. This is just one of many strategies for protest on display at the V&A's “Disobedient Objects,” an exhibition of art and design works created as tools of social change. Items on display range from simple tools—tear gas masks made out of water bottles, a saucepan lid banged in conjunction with hundreds of others to form an Argentinian “noise protest,”—to more complex works, such as a mobile phone game which asks the user to participate in a series of atrocities. Arranged around a high-ceilinged room in four sections (“Making worlds,” “Solidarity,” “Direct action,” and “A multitude of struggles,”), together these objects illustrate the ingenuity of radical movements and oppressed peoples around the world. Designs that were created as open source are often then developed for commercial use, but there are also commercial products that are appropriated for subversive purposes.