How did you first become interested in the intersections between art, design, and architecture?

Over the years, I realised it has always been my favourite zone, giving me the pleasure to explore their gaps and overlaps; and how they leak into each other’s fields. It probably fits my character and appetite best and got amplified by a number of encounters. Even the institution where I studied in Brussels was happily ambiguous at that time, floating somehow between being an academy of arts and a department of architecture. Fortunately, one of the qualities of our time is that many of us are doing a mixture of things, including things that defy easy categorization. Hence, recasting oneself as an artist or a furniture and stage designer doesn’t necessarily need to be an issue or confusing. In fact, it is exactly these ambiguities and boundaries that I like to examine in my practice.

How do you approach your projects and what is your design philosophy?

I prefer to approach my projects as a trail of projects rather than singular projects; with each ‘project’ being an intermediate response to a particular context presented at a specific time. For example, one of my last sculptures, ‘Fuel’, would have never come together without the dust-experiments I had earlier on with Marco D’Agostin, dancer/choreographer, for the design of a stage. Otherwise, I don’t feel tied to strong philosophies and might follow different ones depending on the context and time of a ‘project’. In general, I am most pleased when my work oscillates nicely between intellectual pursuit and emotional discovery, between heart and mind and results in unexpected and sometimes quirky findings, even if it is in a minute detail.

How do you incorporate the concept of sustainability into your work?

It is no longer possible to ignore the sustainable impact of our work. And there is a bit of a dichotomy about the position of artists and designers. One could argue that the world does not need any further objects or things; that we have more than enough stuff around us and that any further manifestations and creations are by default unsustainable. On the other hand, this desire – or need – to create one’s own context, is exactly what makes us human. I try to keep this dilemma at the front of my mind whilst adding to the many things already present in the world. And try questioning the central position we humans give ourselves, including the problematic relationship it may create with everything around us. I try to tread carefully, reuse where possible, limit quantities, but above all have energy resonating as long as possible by (hopefully) adding to relevant stories and needs.

Can you speak about your process of discovering split personalities in objects and tracking ambiguities in the construction of social space?

We tend to look at objects as mediators between people and life. This perspective is obviously very human-centric – looking at objects to find out more about us than about the object itself. To make them ‘function’ for our purpose, so to speak. Hence, in some of my work I like to speculate about what would happen if they had a life of their own. I regularly rework furniture pieces, or pieces that look like furniture, and deliberately mix up their function, appearance, and identity. I try to look at it in a humorous way – what happens if we don’t become occupied with the usual functions, rhythms, habits, and necessities our furniture prompts? What other personalities come to the fore?

Similarly, am I attracted to the – often strange – ways we organise our world, our social space. Many of my works reflect upon interpretations of ‘publicness’, the creation of boundaries and other social constructs. There is a lot of ambiguity to be found in the way we divide between the public and the private, the politics of fear; but also, in the way we consume our resources, appoint value and especially how we (humans) believe that everything can be measured, produced, fixed, and resolved.