Como se Pronuncia Design em Português – Exhibition Design

“How to pronounce design in Portuguese: Brazil Today is an exhibition about Brazil and design in the 21st century. (…) Instead of simplifying, this exhibition explores, and celebrates the current complexity of a country and activity. In the services they provide, the initiatives they create, the research they conduct and the positions they adopt, the Brazilian designers represented here show how they have promoted but also questioned ideas such as consumption and inclusion, memory and heritage, public space and citizenship, innovation and collaboration, progress and protest.” Frederico Duarte, Curator

The exhibition presented 100 perspectives of Brazilian design, from which half were books and half were projects so diverse as a shower gel packs, a material library, a public transport map, a collection of lamps, two games on violence and corruption in Rio de Janeiro, an electronic bracelet or a dystopian view of Brazil in the future.
The visitor should be able to experience these things with a quietness that allowed him or her to reflect them but also to understand the curator’s critical thinking. On a second level it was important for us to step back from the ‘white-cube’ gallery setting and create a vivid space where to present objects that were taken away from their context of use or consumption. On a third level we had to create a truly engaging place: the bookstore. In this room, which was integrated in the course of the exhibition, visitors could browse the 50 books, take their time to read it and, eventually, buy it.